Occipital bun.

[Adumbration]

Now, out of purely scientific curiosity, reach out with your hand to the back of your skull. Do you feel a bump or a bulge there? If you do, you have an occipital bun. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occipital_bun)

I want to know exactly how rare they are, given that I just discovered that I've got one. :smalltongue:

[golentan]

I got one. Right at the top of my spine, I usually rub it when I get nervous.

[YPU]

you know its kind of hard to say if you have one or not, considering you have no reference for either.

[Asta Kask]

Me Neanderthal. Me like bun. Ugh!

[golentan]

you know its kind of hard to say if you have one or not, considering you have no reference for either.

Well, let's see. I have Finnish and Basque ancestors, high spatial reasoning, an MRI of my head where the doctor pointed out the occipital bun as a slightly unusual feature, and a bulge at the base of my skull that none of my other friends have.

I'd say it's pretty easy to say.

[Totally Guy]

Oh, it's got a name.

For years I've been using it to predict the future of barber shop patronage.

If the barber feels it and rubs it and says the magic words... "You've got a funny shaped head" then I predict that I'll not be a customer of theirs again.

[Mando Knight]

Now, out of purely scientific curiosity, reach out with your hand to the back of your skull. Do you feel a bump or a bulge there? If you do, you have an occipital bun. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occipital_bun)

I want to know exactly how rare they are, given that I just discovered that I've got one. :smalltongue:

Oh, so that's what it's called. Yes, I have one, I think. Not much of one, but there's a hard bulge around the location of the occipital bone...

[ForzaFiori]

I THINK I have a small one. Having nothing to compare it to however, it might just be me having a strange shaped head. Also, its right near one of my previous severe head injuries, so for all I know, I MADE an occipital bun on the back of my head.

[valadil]

I definitely have one. I thought that everyone did until a friend suggested I avoid ever shaving my head because of it.

[Telonius]

I have one, I think. It's kind of hard to tell without having any comparison.

Hmm. Maybe it's a predictor of D&D playing?

[Teddy]

As far as I can tell, I've got one. And both a talent for running and spatial reasoning are two important attributes of me. Must be some sami or finnish blood among my ancestors...

[Quincunx]

I have a bump there, a protuberance too small for a bun. However, it's asymmetrical, a tad off-center, and I am told it formed after I got stitches for a head wound after silly toddler antics. However however, those toddler antics as told ended with me falling forward onto, into, or through (separate incidents, separate prepositions) something, a discrepancy which has bothered me for awhile. Thank you. I may have just learned something new today.

[Fostire]

I definitely have one. I've always wondered whether or not it was normal since I never noticed anyone else having one.

[Scoot]

I.. Think I have one. I never noticed that bump back there.

And now I'm worried. :smallannoyed:

[Telonius]

:smallconfused:

:vaarsuvius: : Support for my theory continues to accrue at an alarming rate.

[Fostire]

:smallconfused:

:vaarsuvius: : Support for my theory continues to accrue at an alarming rate.

I think that maybe the people that do have one are posting here so from looking at this thread it looks like a majority of people here have it.

[Quincunx]

Fostire, you clever data-massager, you.

I'm disappointed in myself in that I have no idea if other family members have a bump. With the belief that it was based in trauma and not inherited, I never bothered to look. I can only add the data point that the former housemate who shaved his head did not have a bump there.

@V: I can't enlighten you, but I was also wondering what the gender bias was going to be on the response rate. (So far I'm the only female and the only "maybe".)

[ScIaDrd]

Pardon my ingorance of the antomically scinces but isn´t this thing a sexuallchacteristic of human males only? Beauche thaat what everyoneever has told me, an dthey couldent have been lying to me.:smallconfused: Or were they:smalleek: Just kidding of course but can someone more knowgeable care to enlighten me? Also mine is exectiponaly bulge-y (yay, new word!) and bluntly potruded, just two fingers´breadth above my first cervical vertebra, and if benn told it a sign of maliness, dunno why. Its´s pobaly related to that first theory. Also, I never noticed famales having one. Unless solid proof statieg otherwise can be found I declare it to be conspracy.:smallbiggrin: Anyone wants to join?
Also whoever tought up the name occipital bun, get my seal of Awesome. That name is just plain cool.

[Starshade]

I think i got one. My bump feels like something matching the picture at least.

[Mando Knight]

Pardon my ingorance of the antomically scinces but isn´t this thing a sexuallchacteristic of human males only? Beauche thaat what everyoneever has told me, an dthey couldent have been lying to me.:smallconfused: Or were they:smalleek: Just kidding of course but can someone more knowgeable care to enlighten me? Also mine is exectiponaly bulge-y (yay, new word!) and bluntly potruded, just two fingers´breadth above my first cervical vertebra, and if benn told it a sign of maliness, dunno why. Its´s pobaly related to that first theory. Also, I never noticed famales having one. Unless solid proof statieg otherwise can be found I declare it to be conspracy.:smallbiggrin: Anyone wants to join?
Also whoever tought up the name occipital bun, get my seal of Awesome. That name is just plain cool.
...Let me translate that. It's a little dyslexic-looking.
Pardon my ignorance of the anatomical sciences, but isn't it a sexual characteristic of human males only? Because that's what everyone told me, and the couldn't have been lying to me. :smallconfused: Or were they? :smalleek: Just kidding, of course, but can someone more knowledgeable care to enlighten me? Also, mine is exceptionally bulge-y (yay, new word!) and bluntly protruding just two fingers' breadth above my first cervical vertebra, and I've been told it's a sign of manliness, dunno why. It's probably related to that first theory. Also, I never noticed females having one. Unless solid proof stating otherwise can be found I declare it to be conspiracy.:smallbiggrin: Anyone want to join?

Also whoever thought up the name occipital bun gets my Seal of Awesome. That name is just plain cool.

No, I don't believe it's a (secondary) sexual characteristic. A visible Adam's Apple is much more common in men than women, but unless some real statistical data says otherwise, I'm fairly certain that a fairly non-functioning cranial bulge isn't a sexual characteristic.

[SDF]

It is widely accepted that the cranial shape has no measurable affect on function of the individual. (sorry, no enhanced spatial reasoning, ect.) It's phrenology pure and simple. The laughable (mostly racist) pseudoscience that went out a century ago. (Besides the only source article is written by a bunch of anthropologists in the '90s anyhow. :smalltongue:) Still cool if you have one, or whatever.

[Kobold-Bard]

Oh, it's got a name.

For years I've been using it to predict the future of barber shop patronage.

If the barber feels it and rubs it and says the magic words... "You've got a funny shaped head" then I predict that I'll not be a customer of theirs again.

Count yourself lucky. I have one, which seems to have it's own one. Every barber I've ever had has basically just tried to ignore it and has just used the razor regardless, desperately trying to apparently break it off :smallannoyed:

[Dogmantra]

I think I have one. It's a bulge of sorts, in line with the top of the ear or thereabouts, no?

I just assumed everyone had one.

[Kneenibble]

I strongly suspect this shape is a consequence of alien ancestry. The fact that golentan has one only corroborates this theory.

Remind me never to drop acid at a GitP gathering.

[Rutskarn]

Got a massive one, myself. Never gave it much thought.

[Alteran]

It is widely accepted that the cranial shape has no measurable affect on function of the individual. (sorry, no enhanced spatial reasoning, ect.) It's phrenology pure and simple. The laughable (mostly racist) pseudoscience that went out a century ago. (Besides the only source article is written by a bunch of anthropologists in the '90s anyhow. :smalltongue:) Still cool if you have one, or whatever.

The cranial shape of one person has no bearing on their mental function, no, but a feature like an occipital bun might still be explained by allowing the presence of a larger cerebellum, or somesuch. Evolution leaves very little up to chance, so it probably gave some advantage, as might the lack of one. Cranial shape certainly does affect the mental tendencies of a species (which is why this feature is worth considering when talking about Neanderthals), it just has a low enough correlation to mental function to be a useless metric when examining an individual.

Also, I have one.

[Icewalker]

I think I do, but judging from the responses in this thread, I have suspicions that everybody has a small rise in the back of the head, and that this occipital bun is specifically referring to a larger variation...

[Pyrian]

I have great difficulty buying hats. :smalleek:

[Copacetic]

I think I have one. It's a bulge of sorts, in line with the top of the ear or thereabouts, no?

I just assumed everyone had one.

Listen to what the clever man has to say.

[Kobold-Bard]

I have great difficulty buying hats. :smalleek:

Buying hats is easy. It's buying ones that fit that's the problem :smallwink:

[Alteran]

I think I do, but judging from the responses in this thread, I have suspicions that everybody has a small rise in the back of the head, and that this occipital bun is specifically referring to a larger variation...

Looks like. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Gray188.png)

I feel like mine is bigger than that, but it has the same position and angle. I'm not sure anymore.

[Teddy]

...
Evolution leaves very little up to chance, so it probably gave some advantage, as might the lack of one.
...

I mostly agree with your reasoning, but I feel that I've got to comment on this:

The random mutations that we call evolution are just that, random. Their survivability is dependent on the survival of the host, and so, helpful mutations have the edge over harmful mutations. There are, however, a lot of mutations that cause little to no effect on the body, like changing the eye color or some smaller physical feature. These mutations don't actually alter the survivability of their host, so they might still be spread without any particular reason other than luck.

[SDF]

The cranial shape of one person has no bearing on their mental function, no, but a feature like an occipital bun might still be explained by allowing the presence of a larger cerebellum, or somesuch. Evolution leaves very little up to chance, so it probably gave some advantage, as might the lack of one. Cranial shape certainly does affect the mental tendencies of a species (which is why this feature is worth considering when talking about Neanderthals), it just has a low enough correlation to mental function to be a useless metric when examining an individual.

Also, I have one.

The nature of evolution is chance. (Well unless you want to make some existential, entropy type argument that usually makes my bun, er head hurt) Minor mutation variations in only a small part of the population stay around more often for variation rather than advantage. (Like, I'm left handed, crud) It is so a species doesn't specialize too much and evolve itself into a niche, only to have an environmental factor change and wipe out the whole population. Physical characteristics, as much as humans obsess and emphasize them, have many times less nucleotide coding than things like hormonal factors. (a little goes a long way in the endocrine system) These tend to have a much bigger impact on who you are. Increased brain mass has potential to increase intelligence, but there are many more factors that have to go into it before it does. Otherwise whales would be in space ships right now. Wait, Star Trek IV. Nevermind.

[Alteran]

I mostly agree with your reasoning, but I feel that I've got to comment on this:

The random mutations that we call evolution are just that, random. Their survivability is dependent on the survival of the host, and so, helpful mutations have the edge over harmful mutations. There are, however, a lot of mutations that cause little to no effect on the body, like changing the eye color or some smaller physical feature. These mutations don't actually alter the survivability of their host, so they might still be spread without any particular reason other than luck.

The moment I read the quoted excerpt, I knew what I had coming. And I deserved it.

More specifically, I meant that evolution via natural selection will very rarely allow the wide (or in this case, apparently near-universal) propagation of a trait that does not serve to improve fitness. If a trait arises by random mutation, then it begins in a single individual. In extremely rare cases, you might get a handful of individuals with it. The trait can only spread through reproduction, meaning that every single future individual with the trait shares a common ancestor, the first one to have the trait. If the trait served absolutely no purpose, then it is incredibly unlikely that it would spread very far at all. Locally it might gain some prominence, if the host was fit for other reasons, but on a species-wide scale? I can't imagine it ever happening, especially considering how widely-dispersed Neanderthal populations were. There's simply no reason why the individual's progeny would be so successful, and that trait in particular so liable to spread and be maintained over many generations.

It's possible, I suppose, that the DNA was inherited from even earlier ancestors. If the trait wasn't present in them, then the DNA may have only expressed the occipital bun trait in the context of the greater Neanderthal genome, due to interaction with DNA that was involved with the expression of traits that actually were advantageous. After all, individual genes don't exist in a vacuum. I can't really say how likely this is, but I'd suspect that it's less likely than occipital buns giving the Neanderthals an advantageous tendency. Otherwise, it seems likely that it would have begun to disappear from the population, as sexual recombination and random mutations removing it from the skull would have had no evolutionary disadvantage.


Edit: This response pretty much goes for the post one above me as well. However, it must be noted that natural selection cannot think. It cannot plan ahead, and therefore has no tendency to promote variation in the short term. Traits are only favoured if they provide an immediate fitness boost. This is the only way that things can be, as a potential benefit has no bearing on the chance of an organism to produce viable offspring. Variation helps a population survive in the long-term, but that is not a part of natural selection. Indeed, it is a product of natural selection itself. Species that maintain genetic variety (read: that reproduce sexually) comprise the vast majority of life forms on Earth, and mainly for the reason that you mentioned. It helps them in the long term, and when catastrophic selective pressures came about, it was the species with genetic (and therefore, phenotypic) diversity that survived.

Also, brain size does have a correlation with body size. Whales have massive brains, mainly because they need to control massive numbers of muscle cells. There are many exceptions to this rule (some dinosaurs, I believe), but it's pretty consistently true.

tl;dr

I was careless with wording back there, and I deserved to get called on it. Mutations are random, but evolution is not. Natural selection is the very opposite of random; the characteristics that are most advantageous are the ones that propagate and survive.

[SDF]

When talking about an animal's encephalization quotient a dolphin would be a much more apt example. I was just stretching for a nerdy Star Trek joke. :smalltongue: :smallbiggrin:

[Alteran]

When talking about an animal's encephalization quotient a dolphin would be a much more apt example. I was just stretching for a nerdy Star Trek joke. :smalltongue: :smallbiggrin:

Haha, Star Trek is one of the Nerd Domains that I'm mostly unfamiliar with. Well, also Farscape. And Battlestar Galactica after season 1. And essentially all anime.

...I have much to see.

[thubby]

the back of my head is too lumpy for me to tell. years of mountain-biking, snowboarding, and general shenanigans will do that.

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

I have great difficulty buying hats. :smalleek:

OH, that's why I have trouble with hats. I figured I had a big head. I've got this great hat that came with a leather string, presumably to tie it to your head. Fits great on me, but its much too large for anyone else who's tried it.

Actually I probably also have a really big head.

Yeah, I've got a head-lump. Haven't thought about it years until this thread.

[The Extinguisher]

I think I have one.


Great, now I want to feel the backs of everyone's heads.

[Thajocoth]

You mean some people DON'T have a large lump on the back of their skull at eye level on the back of the skull's lower edge's highest spot? I assumed from my own head that everyone had that. Never heard a term for it before...

[Dogmantra]

Great, now I want to feel the backs of everyone's heads.

I bet this is the kind of rumour that doctors spread to make people randomly start touching other people's skulls. I know I'd do that.

[Thajocoth]

I bet this is the kind of rumour that doctors spread to make people randomly start touching other people's skulls. I know I'd do that.

I remember in elementary school, when the teacher told us where a bone called the Coccyx. (The tailbone.) While we were all feeling for it is when the principal walked in.

It was, quite obviously, a setup.

[skywalker]

You mean some people DON'T have a large lump on the back of their skull at eye level on the back of the skull's lower edge's highest spot? I assumed from my own head that everyone had that. Never heard a term for it before...

I always assumed I was just a mutant freak... I have other bony protrusions too...

But yeah, I have one.

I'd say it's a holdover from the days when we ate a lot more stuff that required stronger jaw muscles... Kinda like dogs have bony ridges back there because they do a lot more tearing than we do.

[Hazkali]

Just to add some balance into this thread, I don't think I have one... that I can tell.

[Rockphed]

You mean some people DON'T have a large lump on the back of their skull at eye level on the back of the skull's lower edge's highest spot? I assumed from my own head that everyone had that. Never heard a term for it before...

I don't. Mutant.

I have matched indentations right behind my ears. Otherwise the back of my head is smooth under my very full head of hair.

I should probably have pointed that mutant comment at Skywalker, but since when have I been reasonable. Furthermore, I should probably go to bed rather than taking pot shots at people discussing their oddly shaped heads. Or my oddly shaped head in this context, seeing as I appear to be in the minority here.

[Quincunx]

SDF: Your internet of win has been ordered, but the gal at the courier service says it's likely to arrive several days late because of the Mother's Day backlog.


I strongly suspect this shape is a consequence of alien ancestry. The fact that golentan has one only corroborates this theory.

Remind me never to drop acid at a GitP gathering.

Note to self: Take Kneenibble off the drinks list at the GitP gathering.

[skywalker]

I don't. Mutant.

I have matched indentations right behind my ears. Otherwise the back of my head is smooth under my very full head of hair.

I should probably have pointed that mutant comment at Skywalker, but since when have I been reasonable. Furthermore, I should probably go to bed rather than taking pot shots at people discussing their oddly shaped heads. Or my oddly shaped head in this context, seeing as I appear to be in the minority here.

You know, I actually kinda like being called "mutant." Like I imagined you calling me that just now, and it didn't make me feel bad. Possibly because I didn't imagine it in a terribly derogatory, hate-filled voice of prejudice, tho. I think it reminds me a lot of Mr. Magorium (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKac-YabbyE), and I imagine Natalie Portman saying it. Plus, I mean, think about all the cool mutants throughout history, Michaelangelo, for one.

[Eddums]

I can't tell. My hair's too long. :smallcool:

[Johel]

Got one.
About the size of my thumb.

Always thought it was normal, some kind of protection for the spine or something. Thanks for making me feel ackward now...

[olelia]

None that I can tell....so this what a minority feels like :smallfrown:.

[Coidzor]

So some humans have 'em too, eh? I'm used to only running into them on Labradors.