(Ex. A man died from slipping on a banana peel while another man survived a fall of an 8 story building)
In: Biology
Both of these events are extremely unlikely, and comparing such statistical anomalies gives you a false impression of both fragility and durability. A lot of things have to go wrong to die from slipping on a banana peel and a lot of things have to go right to survive a fall from the 8th storey.
Well it really depends on the situation and individual honestly. The man who slipped on a banana probably hit his head in just the right place, while the guy who survived the 8 story fall probably landed in just the right way so his legs and back absorbed most of the force. These are more fringe cases but the body can be really fragile in some instances. A really good example of this is when you see a really big body builder or power lifter tear or pull a muscle just doing something trivial like throwing a ball or picking up boxes. That happens when the body isn’t used to a movement pattern, the body doesn’t really know how to properly activate the right muscles. This happens a lot to sedentary people too for the same reasons, they aren’t used to physical activity so it’s easy for them to injure themselves. Overall the body can do some crazy stuff if you teach it what to do.
Ok, those are extreme cases and happen once in a while but let’s have a look in the human body…
Are we fragile? Pretty much yes, we can die like from falling of stairs or something, but what allows the human body to be so durable at the same time is the constant improvement of medicine, us humans can die from stupid things like fever and even a cold like we used to in the 19 century but… As the medicine improved with time we found ways to prevent those things to have such huge effect on our bodies. That’s why few centuries ago a person above 50 years was like really old, cause it wasn’t normal to live that long.
Maybe in a few years we will become much more durable looking at the fact that with the huge amount of technology we have now a days medicine is getting better day by day and each year we discover new vaccines, new cures for diseases and all that stuff.
Human heads are oversized compared to other animals body:head ratio (to make room for brains). This means that falling over from standing is enough to kill you, if your head is the first thing to hit the ground.
Other than that, we’re relatively indestructible compared to other animals. Humans can recover from almost any injury (more than other animals).
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