It’s estimated that around 80% of the world’s population has black hair and brown eyes. These features are just as beautiful as any other traits, but they might not immediately catch your eye if you’re used to seeing them every day. Meanwhile, if you happen to encounter someone who has extremely rare physical features, you might never forget how they look.
Redditors have recently been discussing the most unique physical characteristics they’ve ever seen on another person, so we’ve gathered their most fascinating replies below. From rare medical conditions to having extra fingers or toes, this list just goes to show how complex the human body truly is. Enjoy scrolling through, and be sure to upvote the features that you’ve never seen before!
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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.
Ichthyosis runs in my family, so grateful it skipped my son. It's awful.
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.
Guy in HS had 3 texticles. He was named E.T. the extra testicle.
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.
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.
My grandson was born with 12 toes, one was removed but the other one was left there so now he has 11 toes
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
IIRC there's an actress from... Germany I think? who has this. She plays in ads and stuff, and she looks amazing
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!
You are a sweet angel to be so good to someone with this awful affliction it's painful and people stare and are rude to you ,from someone with NF I know what it's like ,very rare to find someone who looks beyond the bumps
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.
Someone here claimed this can be caused by incest. That's not true. Extreme inbreeding can increase the likelihood of recessive genetic disorders, but common polydactyly usually appears spontaneously or is inherited from parents. And it is relatively common, but many extra fingers are removed so we don't see it often.
I worked with someone who had orangey red hair and eyes that were the exact same color. He did not wear contacts.
Knew a kid that had 2 pupils in one eye that same eye was also 2 different colors.
I have black spots in both my irises, caused by eye disease. Freaks people out when they get a good look. My pupils also don't constrict like they are supposed to, so one is more oval and the other much smaller overall ... the number of times I have had to say, NO, I do NOT have a concussion is amazing.
My friend grows hair out of his gums in his mouth. We looked it up and only a handful of cases worldwide have been reported.
I didn't know him, but one time I was helping a customer at a grocery store I worked at and he threw his head back and laughed, and I saw he had two rows of top teeth.
wtfbenlol:
I have an extra row of teeth behind my front, top teeth. There are 6 of them up there. Kinda like a shark but way more lame.
Had a guy doing some work on a previous rental I lived in, his pupils were rectangular and uncentered.
Webbed toes. All five kids in the family had them.
I'm missing a rib on one side. Just born without it. I don't know how rare it is or isn't, but I've never met anyone else who has it. A quick Google tells me it's associated with other genetic conditions, but I don't have any.
I always knew because when I was a kid I noticed my ribcage was visibly asymmetric and counted them up. But nobody believed me until I was in my 20s and had to get X-Rays done, and the doctor was like... "huh."
I went to school with someone who had no legs and small stumps for arms, a victim of meningitis (vaccinate your kids people!). He had a fantastic attitude about the whole thing, and he ran as fast as any other kid with his prosthetics.
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 met a guy, his buddies called him "redman". He was not a ginger but his skin was red. An anomalous red, not a shade of brown, Red, unlike any ethnic group. Some sort of affliction I am sure. Caucasian guy by ethnicity.
I had a friend who didn't grow any body hair, just the hair on her head and eyebrows.
I wonder if she ever got goosebumps where there was no hair growth
I saw pictures but didn’t see in person. A distant relative had a baby born with his internal organs on the outside. The doctors were able to fix him up and he is like 11 years old now.
My neighbour's son was born like that (he is now 34). The doctors have to pack all the intestines in (what looks like) a clear plastic bag. The baby has to grow a bit before they can get everything back inside his wee tummy. Kind of amazing that babies can survive this because of incredible medical advancements.
You can’t see mine but I have three kidneys. I was born that way. Two are in the normal spots and my extra is lower midline. My grandma had three also so I guess it runs in the family. I should have donated it when I was younger. Doctors said it’s smaller but functional and would be good to donate to a child because it would likely grow with them.
We had a girl in one of my Army units that had no collar bones, she could make her shoulders touch.
Cleidocranial dysplasia. Affects about one in a million people.
My grandpa's heart was in his body backwards, discovered when he had a heart attack and needed surgery. All his other organs were oriented correctly, just his heart was backwards.
Backwards, as in front to back? That would be rare. If it is instead on the right side of his chest instead of the left, that is called dextrocardia. If all the organs are reversed to the opposite of the body, it is called situs inversus totalis. Very interesting.
I knew someone who had one fully brown eye, and one eye that was 3/4 brown and 1/4 blue. Just a pizza-slice-shaped chunk of pure blue amidst the brown.
I had a horse like that. He was an Appaloosa. Unfortunately he also had uveitis and went blind in that same eye.
My grandfather's brother had a scar on his torso, faded but gnarly. I asked what it was. It was the remnant of a tumor extraction. Not that weird you'd say, people get tumors all the time. Well, this tumor was Fetus In Fetu; the man had devoured his twin in-utero and carried its corpse along inside his upper abdomen until he was almost 50. Considering there's roughly 200 known cases of Fetus In Fetu documented in the world, I'd say seeing the aftermath of one is rather rare.
My daughter has double rows of eyelashes.
I have molars with J-shaped roots that curve back upward upon themselves.
I also have Darwin’s tubercles, which causes excess cartilaginous bumps all along my ears and makes them pointy on top like a little elf!
I have the double row eyelashes, it’s not as great as one would think…
Just last week, I found out that my 14 year old cousin doesn’t have fingerprints—including footprints.
A black man with the most unbelievably ice blue eyes I’ve ever seen. He had a very smooth but unrecognizable accent and sometimes I’m convinced I met some kind of deity that day.
My dad has a birthmark on his face shaped *exactly* like Africa.
An old friend of mine once had a bruise that looked EXACTLY like that picture of Johnny Cash, flipping off the camera. It was INSANE.
You can't see my rare features, but i was born without an appendix, I have an extra vertebrae and my normal body temperature is 96 degrees, F. rather than 98.6. Oh, and my eyes fixed themselves. I don't need glasses anymore.
I have offsetting birth defects in my hand. I inherited polydactyl genes from my mom and missing fingy genes from my dad. I have 10 fingers, but they're not normal.
My right hand has 2 ring fingers and no pinky. Looks almost totally normal til you X ray it.
(Edit- The key difference between your pinky and other fingers is that the pinky shares a ~~knuckle~~ tendon with the ring finger. Thats why you can't fold your pinky flat without also bending your ring finger in a little. I however can make a fist with only my "pinky" no problem.).
I worked with a guy who has some rare form of hyperdontia. Like his body will just randomly decide to grow extra teeth and he has to go get them pulled.
Apparently his dental X-rays look super [messed] up.
My wife has the cutest dimple I’ve ever seen and I’ve never seen it on anyone else. It’s right below her eye when she laughs. I know it doesn’t compare to other comments but thought it was worth mentioning. lol.
My grandfather had like royal blue eyes, quite unusual and the only person I’ve ever seen with that color of eyes.
I worked with a woman with the most electric yellowish green eyes. I’m jealous to this day. You never see green eyes like THAT!
My Indian second cousin (with Indian parents) has dark blue eyes. 99.99% of Indians have black/brown eyes. Occasionally Indians have green or pale brown eyes, but never blue.
My Indian mother-in-law has pale green eyes. All of her 3 children have brown.
Had a classmate in middle school who had eyes so brown that they almost appeared red. Completely naturally. I've met so many people with a golden tint, or just a "deeper" brown, but never a shade of brown like hers.
My husband has the golden tint, you can see it in the sunlight only. Otherwise, they're green
Ringed hair, I worked with a girl that when you looked at each strand of individual hair closely was ringed with light and dark color hard to describe it was very subtle but I never herd of it and it looked cool.
My uncle had a skin graft. On his eyelid. The skin had come from his thigh in a technique called a walking skin graft. He had to shave his eyelid thereafter.
In highschool I had two male friends with chest deformities. One of them- his sternum stuck outwards. The other one- caved in. I liked to make them hug each other.
Pectus carinatum it sticks out (often called pigeon chest) and pectus excavatum, it is caved in.
I met someone with eyes the color of most huskies. He told me he thinks the majority of people he meets don’t listen to a word he says because they’re so distracted by his eyes. He told me that as I was leaving because I talked to him for a couple of hours at a party and I never mentioned his eyes and he appreciated not having someone new talk about it.
Meg Foster. She even played an alien in DS9 and didn't have to wear contacts!
I used to babysit two girls. Both their parents have brown hair and brown eyes. The older sister has dark features like her parents while her younger sister has bright orange hair, a brown eye with dark eyebrow and black lashes on one side, and a pale blue eye with blond eyelashes and eyebrow on the other side. She was a ginger with a half albino face basically. But because she was so white, you couldn’t really see the difference on her skin.
Girl in elementary school had cats eyes. It was so bizarre.
I saw a woman who had actual whiskers growing out of the upper lip area. 60 yrs ago.
-Guy who ran a gas station I frequented had a case of vitiligo.
-Knew a whole family with red hair and green eyes. (Sadly, not the Weasley's)
-Went to school someone who had Blaschko's lines visible.
Not sure which one is the rarest.
I used to do manicures. Something is wrong here... one, two, three fingers, thumb... where's number 4???
One would think that would be something you would warn someone about ahead of time.
Turned out she was one of the children of thalidomide.
Not crazy rare but someone mixed race with ginger hair and green eyes, they’re also just so beautiful anyway.
My mother had a huge crush on Warrick Brown from CSI because of his amazing green eyes!
I have a third tear-duct near my throat that opens and closes when I swallow, and "cries" sometimes. I've never met anyone else with this condition, and can hardly find any information online about it. According to my parents, the 80 year-old nurse who helped deliver me had the same thing and that's the only reason my parents have any information about it.
My husband has mandibular tori; bone growth inside your mouth. In his case, it’s genetic.
I met a guy that had no muscle in one of his lower legs, just bones covered in skin. He walked around, slowly.
I worked with a woman with a skin condition where her skin just constantly grew and didn't shed on its own. She had scaly looking patches that were slightly greenish.
The kid who was in my class at nursery who has amber coloured eyes. Terrified me 🤣 i used to hide from him. I still feel bad about it.
I was in Nepal doing relief work.
Walking along a Nadi (river) there was a guy on the path in front of me. His foot was so twisted he was literally stepping on the 'top' of his foot, it curved that much. No shoe, no sandal.
Every step was clearly a labor, a process.
I think about him a lot, because I had to learn to walk again after a horrific motorcycle accident. Fortunately I'm almost fully recovered. Dude was born this way. No apparatus, no mobility aid. Just churning his way along.
My coworker was born like this but surgery fixed it in no time. It's not obvious at all
Saw an asian girl with naturally light golden blonde straight hair, she was probably 5 years old so not dyed. This would’ve been no later than 2003, and I’ve never seen this since. I assumed her father was likely white, as she was with her mum who was Asian.
My mother was 35 when she discovered she had been born without one kidney. She had multiple operations before that, and ct and mri and pet scans (idk which does what but I know she’s had all of them…) and no one ever noticed she had one kidney.
Not really the same but after my mom's mastectomy, any time she had a scan, the technicians would freak out and think something was wrong with the machine. I must remember that if, in the future I have scans, I'll have to tell people ahead of time... Cause I had the exact same procedure as my mom.
I have a duplicate set of veins in one of my legs and a birthmark running the length of it.
I knew a girl with a 1.5 inch skin tag coming out of her temple, looked like a little floppy antennae. Never saw anyone else with one like hers until Waffle House in Jackson MS when our hostess had TWO of them one on each side.
I went to elementary school with a girl whose hair was absolutely ice white. She wasn't albino although she was quite fair. She and her older brother had the kind of stark white hair you would only associate with extreme old age. Very beautiful like an elf.
There is a well known actor in my country that has ice white hair and piercing blue eyes. Not albino. Many years ago I saw him on the beach with his daughter - she also has his ice white hair
I once met someone who had a very obvious Habsburg jaw in university. Considering the history of the Habsburg jaw... well, I never attempted to ask about their family tree.
I knew a little boy that was born with some health complications, but one of the benign attributes was that he didn't have ligaments in this thumbs. They could bend any direction with no pain. He couldn't use them. I knew him as an infant like 15 years ago, so I'm now sure how he's doing now.
Lady at a convenience store I used to stop most mornings had six fingers on her right hand. It took me a while to see it, but when I did, I couldn’t unsee it.
I was born with a heart shaped tongue. Which to me, is perfectly normal and a total nothing burger. But when I bring it up and show it to people it’s definitely an oddity to look at. The way people gather around to look and comment lol. I was told growing up that I was expected to have a lisp, which would have been HORRIBLE because I’m gay. To the contrary I have a very enviable deep voice, very similar to Dan Rather.
A good family friend had lost his ring finger on one hand as a young man. So one hand only had three fingers but his hand had grown to sort of adapt. Meaning it didn’t look like he was missing a finger. It took me years to notice he had a Simpson hand!
Was walking in a city a while back, crossed paths with a guy wearing slides. He had straight up monkey feet.
Looked it up and it’s a thing that happens to some of us. Toe thumbs are a related minor variation.
I didn't know this could be an actual thing. I have long fingers and toes and that made it hard to fit shoe size, and when I walk in flip flops they curl like they want to grab onto something. I thought I had 'monkey toes."
I met identical triplets when I was in 1st grade. They were in kindergarten.
I knew twins one was as white as white can be and the other was so black you'd only see eyes and teeth coming at you in the dark ( his words not mine ) people never believe they were brother and sister always thought they were dating..
I knew a guy whose head and neck came out from nearly the front of his chest. It was off-putting to say the least.
This was the result of a traffic accident. He was lucky to survive.
Two of my kids have red hair and blue eyes, which apparently are present together in less than .2% of the population, more rare than heterochromia (I thought it was more common than that).
I wonder how rare this actually is. Two of my four daughters are blue-eyed redheads. One of my aunts, one of my nephews and two of my nieces as well. I have red hair and my eyes are green but my mom swears they were blue until I was about seven (I don't know if I believe her). I've met far more blue eyed redheads than I have people with two different colored eyes.
The more I read of so called abnormalities, the more I realise being different is okay. It's okay to okay with myself. I have a couple of the traits featured here.
The more I read of so called abnormalities, the more I realise being different is okay. It's okay to okay with myself. I have a couple of the traits featured here.
