I can smell ants too, and it's been useful here in the land of fire ants...
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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I can raise my middle toe like I'm flicking you off
I'm really bad with names and faces, but I can distinguish twins. I mean not the twins like "and my twin has a penis" but monozygotic twins.
I don't claim it to be any kind of a super power, but with my inability to recognize people even after they've been at the hairdresser it's really astonishing.
I can 'flex' my Eustachian tubes and 'open them' at will, e.g. equalising pressure when ears need 'popping' on planes. I'm sure it isn't that uncommon but no one ever knows what I mean when I say it.
Ever scuba dive? Most masks you see have a rubber nose piece that lets the diver squeeze their nose shut so they can blow and equalize pressure.
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This is called the tensor timpani and I just learned from my hypermobilty support group that it's super common in people with hypermobilty disorders generally to be able to move them. Look up Beighton scale and give yourself a quick check.
Finding out I was hypermobile lead to me discovering my ADHD wasn't inattention, but highly variable blood pressure and a wonky vagal nerve condition. Changed my meds, changed my life.
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I've got that. Very useful for looking unaffected by pressure changes, which is to say, not that useful.
People dont get what you mean with "popping your ears"? How can an adult never experience that?
Most people do it by swallowing? So I guess they shrug it off that I do it slightly differently.
Yeah but I feel like most adults would have had pressure sensitive ears at some point in the life (like from a cold or something), forcing them to learn about popping ears, even if the only way of doing it they know is swallowing.
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I have extremely sensitive hearing. I can tell when there's an animal scarer nearby.
This brings me to Microsoft Teams. You might have seen people mention that their dogs know when someone joins the call before they do. That's because they introduced "ultrasonic howling" to detect if they're in the same room as you, and mutes their mic.
It hurts like fucking hell with headphones on.
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I think I can smell progesterone, in some women, and in some months (far more than others/other times). Being male, this is absolutely is not something I can collect a lot of data on very quickly, and I don't know whether the strength or clarity for me correlates with women who have higher levels than normal, but I do know it correlates really well with this chart in terms of timing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Estradiol_and_progesterone_%25_changes_across_the_menstrual_cycle.tif
So often I know that it's a week and a half before your period, and I know what that means, but I promise you that I have never ever used this knowledge, partly because I'm pretty shy, but not even with my wife (who doesn't know I can tell) when we were aiming for pregnancies, because that was a very busy time indeed in that arena and I saw no reason to reduce that in any way whatsoever.
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I can blur my vision on command, kinda useless but a bit of fun to play with.
I also have a lazy eye, so I can scare unsuspecting people, sometimes two at a time if they're positioned right.
Sorry, but can't everyone blur their vision? You just use your eye muscles to lose focus, right?
It could be different depending on where you live, but it's pretty rare to find another person who can do the same where i live.
I couldn't when I was younger. Now I can, but not for more than 2 seconds
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