“It’s A Sight I’ll Never Forget”: 50 Unique Physical Features That Fascinated People

From seventh grade on I went to school with a guy named Mark who had Ichthyosis. It’s a horrible disease where his skin was so dry it would come off in big flakes, and it was pretty gross. The kids of course called him Cornflake and he was severely bullied. My best friend and I took pity on him and didn’t treat him like some kind of monster - which a lot of kids did - and stood up for him whenever we could. This went on for all of junior and high school. Lost track of Mark after school but one day I was standing in line at Winn-Dixie when I hear from behind me “Well, well, well, of it isn’t itimedout! I turned around and there’s Mark, looking gruesome as ever but his eyes were light and he was happy to see me and I was happy to see him! We chatted while we waited, he said he had his own business working from home doing something, not married but still had his mom and dad. He said he often thought of school and me and my best friend. I told him same. Mark is a super nice guy, he’s sweet and funny but got dealt the [worst] hand ever and I hope I made life a tiny bit better for him because he actually taught me a lot.

I have a birth mark running from my chin towards my neck that looks like a little pink caterpillar and I’ve never seen anyone with the same kind of birth mark. Usually kids notice it and when they ask what it is, I tell them it’s where my human suit zips up.

Guy in HS had 3 texticles. He was named E.T. the extra testicle.

I have a niece who had a brain scan in her teen years after a kind of weird episode at school. They determined that more than half of the white matter in her brain was missing. The doctor said he was amazed she was even able to sit upright, let alone function otherwise. She had been an A student till then, and after a lot of testing they found a few autoimmune possibilites, but never nailed down the cause of the brain tissue loss. Doctors figured that her brain just developed alternate pathways. She has some "quirky" general behaviors, but has grown into a sweet woman who now has 5 kids. The brain is an amazing thing.

Rarest physical feature: a girl with two thumbs on one hand.

I was the new kid in 7th grade, sitting near the back of the bus with high schoolers. They dragged me into a debate by asking if a girl was pretty. She was.

Then she asked, “How about now?” and slapped her hand on my leg. That’s when I saw it — two thumbs.

I froze and said, “Even better!”

The whole bus erupted, she smiled, and went back to her seat.

Bartending. Guy comes in and tells me I need to give him a free shot if he showed me something weird.

Said ok, sure, let's see it.

Dude slips off a Birkenstock sandal and right under the top band of the sandal, he had an extra toe just growing there in the centre of the top of his foot. A regular sized toe with a toenail and all.

He wiggled the weird extra toe, then the rest of his toes, and then he asked for the shot.

I obliged. No charge for that shot.

I had an elderly neighbor. Her husband passed and I looked after her and helped her with yard work and household stuff. She had Neurofibromatosis. Her entire body was covered in bumps of various sizes from the size of peppercorns to marbles.

One night my phone rang at like 2am and she had fallen down the stairs. How she happened to have the phone nearby is a mystery- this was before cell phones. I went over and there she was, poor thing, wearing nothing, laying on the floor. It’s a sight I’ll never forget. Got her dressed and to the hospital. She had 2 daughters, 1 close by and one far away. Why she called me I don’t know.

She [passed away] about 2 years later and left me a bunch of things in her will. Her daughters were pissed!

In my teenage years, I worked at an outdoor activity centre that specialised in physically and mentally disabled clients.

One lad, Jonny, who was about my age and lived locally, used to come for occasional respite weekends, but couldn’t do any activity.


He had a horrible condition called dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, which meant his skin broke open or detached at the lightest of touches.


Despite living with that, he was a lovely lad, incredibly funny, and later in his life there was a documentary made about him called


The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off.


It’s worth an hour of anyone’s time.

I knew a guy with a tail. It was an extension of his spine- normally absorbed during development he said.

Bajadasaurus:

A girl I worked with grabbed my hand and shoved it down the back of her pants to "show" me her tail. It was at least four inches long, and crooked. She could wiggle it. I was traumatized.

I went to school with twin sisters who were identical in every way - except for their eyes.

Both of them had heterochromia, but their eye colours were strikingly different to each other.

Twin one had a green right eye and blue left eye. Twin two meanwhile had a hazel right eye and a blue-grey left eye.

Every few years the memory pops into my head of this small child I saw at the supermarket once. He was about four or five years old, and had hypertrichosis on one side of his body only. One side was completely covered in dark brown soft-looking hair, over his face, arm, leg, everything - but the other side was normal, split perfectly down the middle. I always wonder how he’s doing, feel bad for staring but I was only a kid myself. Genuinely was one of the most fascinating people I ever saw.

My Irish grandmother never had grey hair. Jet black until the day she died in her 80's.

Apparently its a rare condition that some Irish and Native American can have. None of us inherited the gene unfortunately.

I had a friend whose father had 6 fingers on both hands. He played the piano beautifully!!!

falcon5services:

Worked with a guy who had six fingers on one hand. Fully functional too, it actually helped him grip tools better.

My grade 6 teacher had violet coloured eyes. At the time, it was estimated there were less than 200 on earth with that colour.

I know a woman with black hair who has a birthmark on her head that causes the hair in that spot to grow in blonde.

Almost albino feller had hair color split down the middle, black one side and blond other - except his eyebrows were opposite. Also had two different eye colors but I don’t remember the arrangement.

I worked with someone who had orangey red hair and eyes that were the exact same color. He did not wear contacts.

When I was in high school, I worked at McDonald’s. We had a regular customer who had a blue head. He was bald. His entire head was blue. His hands were normal color. I understand this can happen when someone ingests too much colloidal silver.

DrKittyLovah:

There is also a genetic issue that can cause blue skin called methemoglobinemia, look up the Blue Fugates from Kentucky for examples.

Knew a kid that had 2 pupils in one eye that same eye was also 2 different colors.

Webbed toes. All five kids in the family had them.