5 Surprising Facts About Babies

1. Newborns Can SwimNewborns Can Swim

A group of scientists decided one day that it would be a good idea to dip 36 newborns’ faces into cold water and just see what happened. Surprisingly, instead of committing mass infanticide, they discovered something amazing—the babies instinctively knew how to hold their breath. They survived and even came out giggling and smiling.

Babies can do more than just hold their breath, though. In another experiment, researchers had parents hold their babies in the water with their tummies down. The babies started kicking and moving their legs in a doggy-paddle motion that actually kept them afloat.

The experiments proved that newborns have an instinctive ability to dive and swim. Researchers also found, though, that we lose it when we turn six months old—something they presumably discovered through an experiment that went slightly less well.

2.Young Children Can Grow Their Fingertips Back

if your child accidentally loses part of a limb, you might not need to panic. According to Dr. Christopher Allan, “Kids will actually regrow a pretty good fingertip, after amputation, if you just leave it alone.”

It’s something that Dr. Allan discovered with an eight-year-old patient. She had cut off the tip of her middle finger in a bike spoke, and Dr. Allan couldn’t figure out how to reattach it. So he told the family, “Just stick the tip back on and hope for the best.”

When the girl came back a few weeks later, she had wisely ignored Dr. Allan’s advice—and her fingertip had grown back on its own. Further research has proven that this isn’t an isolated case. Kids can grow fingertips back as long as the slice doesn’t go past the edge of the nail.

3.Children’s Fingerprints Disappear Incredibly Quickly

Fingerprinting technology has taken crime-fighting a long way. Criminal plots are undone every day by the telltale prints left at the scene of the crime—a fate that could have been avoided if they’d just had the common sense to train a group of toddler thieves to commit their crimes. Because, as it turns out, children’s fingerprints don’t stick around.

An experiment had children up to age 17 shake vials of alcohol between their thumbs and forefingers. Then the vials were tested for fingerprints. The researchers found that children’s fingerprints quickly vanished while adults’ prints stayed behind. Scientists believe this happens because children have more fatty acids in their fingertips, which make the fingerprints less permanent.

4.Newborns Can Crawl—As Long As It’s Toward A Boob

Normally, children don’t start crawling until they’re 7–10 months old. As it turns out, that’s because they don’t have the right incentive. If a baby’s motivated enough, you can get them to crawl as soon as they come out of the womb.

An experiment was conducted on babies immediately after they were born. The child was dried, laid on the mother’s chest, and not fed—just to see what would happen. For the first 15 minutes, the children just laid there. After a while, they started to spontaneously suck at the air, and before the test was done, the babies actually crawled over to the mother’s nipple and started sucking.

So you can get your baby to crawl. All it takes is about an hour of leaving a newborn child to fend for itself

5.Newborns Can Eat As Much As They Want Without Getting Fat

It turns out that you don’t need to worry about your baby’s weight. Newborns have something called “brown fat” that can burn calories at incredible speeds. They have a lot of it, too. It makes up about 5 percent of a newborn’s body mass.

The purpose is to keep babies from dying when it’s cold. When the temperature drops, the brown fat produces heat and burns calories like nothing else. So much so that 85 grams (3 oz) of stimulated brown fat can burn 400–500 calories per day.

If you’re feeling a little jealous of babies right now, you’re not alone. Some scientists are so jealous of babies’ fat-burning powers that they’re trying to find a way to get those powers into adults. For now, though, this special ability is for babies only.