3 Superhuman Traits That Some Are Born With — and Others You Can Learn

Spiderman can climb walls. Cyclops can project energy beams from his eyes. Wonder Woman has both super strength and super agility. But many ordinary people possess superpowers – or at least what appear to be superhuman talents.

Ordinary humans may not be able to fly, lift buildings, or run as fast as a speeding ball, but there are a few seemingly superhuman abilities that we humans possess. There are some we can be born with and others we can learn ourselves.

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1. Super-recognition: faces stand out in a crowd

Have you ever met someone and thought, “I know I’ve seen that face somewhere before,” but you just can’t remember who it is or where you met them? Super-recognizers do not have this problem. These are people who are much better than most people at recognizing faces – even those of people they haven’t seen in years.

Richard Russell, a psychology professor at Gettysburg College, first described the condition in a 2009 article in Bulletin and psychonomic review. Super-recognition is the other end of the spectrum from prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces, he says. There are specific brain areas involved in face perception, the best known being the fusiform facial area (FFA), but until now, no definitive research has explained the super-recognition phenomenon.

Like its counterpart, prosopagnosia, super-recognition is something of a stealth condition.

“We don’t really know we have it unless we take a formal test. Or maybe we might learn over time that we see things differently, in subtle ways, than others do,” Russell says.

Even people who know that they are very good at recognition tend to keep this fact to themselves. Telling people you recognize them when they’re not expecting it can sometimes make you feel like a bit of a “stalker,” says Russell. However, this skill can be useful. In the United Kingdom, police services are recruiting super-recognizers for tasks such as identifying suspects caught on CCTV cameras and scanning crowds at public events for known offenders, according to the London Assembly.

2. Super Memory and Mnemonists: Practice Makes Perfect

Some people’s superpower is memory. Memory champions, sometimes called mnemonists, are people who can memorize long lists of items, such as numbers or randomly arranged playing cards. To win the Memory League World Championship 2025, Vishvaa Rajakumar memorized 80 random numbers in 13.5 seconds.

As impressive as these feats are, Memorists are more like Batman than Superman – their ability is acquired. Super memorizers learn techniques to help them memorize long lists. One such technique, the method of loci, also known as Memory Palace, involves assigning each item on the list you want to remember a specific location on an imaginary map, perhaps the house you grew up in or the neighborhood where you live.

You then mentally walk through the house or neighborhood, collecting these memories. It’s not as simple or as easy as it sounds, but it’s effective – and with practice, most people can master it.

Just because these talents aren’t innate doesn’t mean the brains of these memory champions are like those of the rest of us. A 2017 study in Neuron have discovered that practicing these techniques can lead to lasting changes in the brain’s connections. Of course, for this technique to work for you, you need to practice, and it only helps you with the things you’re trying to memorize. Even super memorizers sometimes forget where they left their car keys.

3. Echolocation: using our ears to navigate

When we think of echolocation, we probably think of bats or whales. But humans can also perform echolocation. When humans echolocate, they project clicks with their mouths or sometimes finger snaps, and the sounds bounce off any objects in front of them, according to a 2007 study. Borders. They can estimate how far away an object is based on how long it takes for the echo to return. It is possible to determine whether the object is on the right or left by noting in which ear the echo is louder.

Lore Thaler, a neuroscientist at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, studies the phenomenon and trains people in the technique. It was once thought that only blind people could master this skill. However, Thaler and his team proved this to be false. They trained both sighted and blind people and found little difference in their ability to learn the method.

“It’s not very difficult,” she said.

However, Thaler says that because it is more beneficial to blind people, they engage more in training, although she emphasizes that the technique is a complement and not a replacement for guide dogs and long canes.

“If we find people who use echolocation at a level that we call expert, they are all blind people, because for them it is more useful than for typically sighted people,” she says. Although the benefits are obvious for blind people, Thaler says sighted people who have learned this technique report that it increases their overall sensitivity to sound in general. “They really enjoy it,” she said.

Thaler’s research showed that echolocation is first processed in the same brain centers as any other sound, such as the primary auditory cortex. Then it activates other areas, including many areas associated with vision.

These are just some of the seemingly superhuman traits of ordinary people. Maybe more of us should wear capes.

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