This Boy Can Stretch His Uvula To Never-Before-Seen Lengths

The uvula: It's that dangly thing in the back of your throat. For most people, it forever remains a mysterious piece of flesh.

Not for 17-year-old Sam Ireland. He grabbed life by the gullet and stretched his uvula to never-before-seen lengths. The Colorado teen's uvula can extend nearly three and a quarter inches.

He noticed his unusually stretchy uvula by chance a couple years ago.

"I was super tired and bit it one night," he told HuffPost, "Everyone does stupid things when they’re tired, so I pulled on it and it started to get stretched out."

It didn't hurt, so he kept on tugging. He didn't mean to stretch it out, but would subconsciously pull on it from time to time until it reached its current length. 

Ireland says that his parents were initially amazed when he showed them what he could do, but also kind of concerned. 

"I’ve gone to the doctor twice and talked about my uvula," Ireland said. "Both doctors didn’t know what it was, so they said it was a cool party trick." He said it was the first time they'd ever seen anyone do that. 

His friends and family have gotten used to the trick, and it's even gained him some attention around his high school.

"Most people think its either really cool, or disgusting or both," he said. "A lot of the people who I don't know at school now call me uvula guy."

Ireland says his stretchy uvula has never gotten in the way of his daily life, except for the one time he accidentally swallowed it. He likens the experience to the feeling you get when you swallow a piece of spaghetti and pull it back up. 

Having never heard of another person who could do this, Ireland reached out to Ripley's Believe It or Not!

"I'm baffled," said Edward Meyer, the Vice President of Exhibits and Archives at Ripley's Believe It Or Not! "I compare it to people who can swallow swords or breath fire."

Meyers says he's never seen anything like this before, and explained that the sheer strangeness of discovering you are capable of such a thing is what is so interesting. Editors decided to include Ireland and his uvula in the newest issue of Ripley's Believe It or Not!: Eye-Popping Oddities!

"The oddness of somebody being able to discover that they can do something that nobody else can, thats what a real believe it or not is," Meyers said. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Source: http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/c/35496/f/677553/s/4b3bde28/sc/38/l/0L0Shuffingtonpost0N0C20A150C110 ... and provided by entertainment-movie-news.com