Why Your Belly Button Has Lint

Just so you know: Navel lint is caused by a unique arrangement of abdominal hairs that are positioned in concentric circles around the belly button and “act like a kind of barbed hooks,” the Telegraph reports. The discovery comes from an Austrian doctor who conducted 3 years of tireless investigation on his own navel. Don't like lint in your belly button? Shave your belly, get a piercing, or wear older clothes, which shed less.

“The question of the nature of navel fluff seems to concern more people than one would think at first glance,” Dr. Georg Steinhauser writes, perhaps hopefully, in the journal Medical Hypotheses. “We hope we have been able to provide information for doctors when they are next confronted with the simple question of ‘why some belly buttons collect so much lint and others do not.’” (More belly buttons stories.)