There are innies, outies, and the occasional pierced one (and whatever the hell you classify that picture to the the right as), but right after that, belly buttons get pretty darned uninteresting.  Or do they?

So-called scientists are claiming belly buttons are the key to determining your athletic prowess.  I mean sure, if you can hang a bottle out of yours, you probably aren’t too athletically inclined.  But otherwise, this seems a non-intuitive relationship.

Yet these folks are claiming that how far your belly button is off the floor (after adjusting for height differences) will determine if you are a runner or a swimmer.  High navels make you a runner and low navels make you a swimmer.

Further, Africans tend toward high navels and Europeans toward low, which apparently explains why blacks dominate track & field while whites rule the pool.  Yet they go on to note that belly button height is really correlated to body type.  That is, if you have longer legs your navel is relatively higher than a person of the same overall height with short legs and a long torso.  Duh.  The Duh-plus is that people with long legs have an advantage on the track while long torsos are an advantage to swimmers.

So while the whole belly button claim makes for a great headline, all that’s really being said is runners should be tall with long legs and swimmers should be tall with long torsos.  Anybody who’s ever watched the Summer Olympics on TV should already have had a handle on that.  Or is it news that blacks tend toward longer legs while whites tend toward long bodies?  Hardly.

Therefore, I guess we really didn’t learn much here today.  Except that maybe if you can hang a bottle out of your belly button that you absolutely should.  Because your husband is really gonna need a drink when he gets home.