Although breast cancer is a serious health threat to women, boobs shouldn’t only conjure up thoughts of mammograms, mastectomies, and medical issues. Breasts as we know them are unique to the human female body, and there are many things that most people don’t even know about them. In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, check out these crazy, fascinating, and downright weird things you may not have realized about boobs.
- Human females are the only mammals whose breasts are visible at all times throughout maturity. Most animals, such as dogs, cats, and lesser primates, display swollen or enlarged mammaries only when they are pregnant or nursing their young; their breasts recede when the offspring are weaned. Evolutionary biologists think that humans’ permanently displayed breasts are intended to confuse potential mates about women’s reproductive status.
- In Greek mythology, the universe was created when the god Zeus tricked his wife, Hera, into breastfeeding his half-human son Heracles. According to the legend, when Hera realized that the suckling infant was not her own, she pushed him away and the drops of spilled milk became the Milky Way galaxy.
- There’s no such thing as a perfectly symmetrical set of breasts. All breasts have differences, but most discrepancies are simply too tiny to be noticed. For reasons unknown, the left breast tends to be larger than the right.
- Two million women in the United States have breast implants. The average age at which a woman gets implants is thirty-four.
- In early 2009, Sheyla Hershey of Brazil was awarded the Guinness World Record for having the largest set of breasts. After nine surgeries and more than a gallon of silicone, her breasts are a size 38KKK.
- Women who get breast implants are at least three times more likely to commit suicide, a risk that increases with time. As the August 2007 Annals of Plastic Surgery reported, it’s unlikely that silicone toxicity causes the correlation. It’s more probable that women who undergo breast augmentation are more apt to have an underlying psychiatric problem that predisposes them to suicide.
