Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
I’ve done a bit of research on this, and so far have found no strong evidence either proving or disproving this. I could simply say that the burden of proof should rest on the people making this claim, but that’s perhaps a bit of a cop out.
The most interesting response to this mystery is on an ‘ezine @rticles’ page, ‘Why Do Smart People Have More Zinc and Copper in Their Hair?’ by Lance Winslow, who starts by suggesting that this is a ‘commonly known fact’ (which always makes me suspicious):
If a pilot, soldier or racecar driver put copper and zinc in their helmet would that help make them smarter or is it from the body discharging the heavy metals easily from the body that makes the brain work better. If so, if you reduced you zinc and copper in your blood thru filtration, could you increase cognition? Are some blood types, which filter better causing this? Thus certain blood types are the cause of more intelligence and not necessarily the zinc or copper its self? Think on this in 2006.
Sounds a bit mad if you ask me, but that’s the internet for you.
Another website claimed that this is the cause of a blonde myth:
A silly story often ciculates that Intelligent People have more Zinc and Copper in their hair. Brown and Red is a Copper Color, so this explains why blondes are dumb? This myth is ridiculous.
Indeed.
Finally, the question of whether this ‘factoid’ is true or not was put to the community of student.com, with the response that 141 people (40%) thought it was true, and 211 (60%) thought it was false. They do claim that the ‘answer’ is that it is true, but then they could have just read that somewhere else on the internet.
So overall, this is so far inconclusive, rather annoyingly.
The case continues.
‘It is impossible to lick your elbow’
The inclusion of this ‘fact’ within the e-mail circulated fact lists seems to be as much about the joy of making people try it for themselves as it is about anything else (and I bet you have a go whilst reading this!).
It is, of course, pretty tricky (as you’ll find), but by no means impossible. If you have a long tongue, or just flexible arms (or more grimly, a dislocated shoulder), you may just be able to manage it. There’s even plenty of videos on YouTube doing just such a demonstration:
The Guinness World Records organisation have even had the following statement on their website before:
Contrary to popular urban legend, it is quite possible to lick your own elbow. Guinness World Records receives about five claims a day for this and we would like to stress the following point: being able to lick your own elbow is not, in any sense, a world record.
If you’re one of the admittedly rare few who can lick your elbow, save it for the water cooler. Please don’t email us!
Of course, if you have a super-long tongue � longer than the current tongue world record � then we’ll be happy to get our tape measure out!
(The page is no longer on their website, but you can see an archived version of it from Jan 2006.)
Amusingly, this seems to be quite a popular internet topic. At the time of writing, Google estimates 369,000 results for lick own elbow…
If you can do it (or if you tried and failed), post your amusing story below. (Oh and I’m not responsible for any injuries you might sustain whilst attempting it).