Is that a mole, or a third nipple?
We're all on guard for the occasional, embarrassing nip slip. But could we be showing a little more than we bargained for without even knowing it?
That little round mark below your breast, near the bottom of your rib cage. It looks like a mole, but it may actually be an extra nipple.
Relax-they're usually non-functional. And they're a lot more common than you might think. About 1 in 50 women have them, and about 1 in 100 men. They usually appear on the chest, along the "milk line"- picture an invisible line running from each armpit, though the breasts, and down to the groin. Yes, kind of where the extra teats would be on a non-human animal-but not always.
In May, 2006, a 22-year-old Brazilian woman asked her doctor to check out a strange growth on the bottom of her foot and found out that she had a fully developed nipple "in the plantar region of her left foot," according to a report in the journal Dermatology Online. The nipple, pictured here (safe for work, we guess!) was "surrounded by areola and hair," and though there was some fatty tissue beneath it, there was no glandular tissue, making it a "pseudomamma" and not a rogue breast.
The foot is a first. According to Dermatology Online, random extra nipples have been found on the back, face, shoulder, and thigh before, but never on the bottom of the foot. Apparently, the growth did not cause the woman any pain. (Breast cancer can develop wherever there is breast tissue, though, even if it's in an unconventional place. And extra nipples, even ones tiny enough to pass for moles or freckles, can sometimes be signs of heart defects or kidney problems. So it's worth watching out for.)
In some cultures, they're considered a sign of virility (in men) or fertility (in women), Jezebel points out. In other cultures, extra nipples-also called "accessory nipples" (!) or "supernumerary nipples"-were considered a mark of evil. Witches were said to use them to suckle demons, and some people still refer to them as "witches nipples."
In pop culture, however, they seem to be getting popular. Mark Wahlberg has one. So does Zac Efron. Carrie Underwood talked about hers during her "American Idol" audition. And Lily Allen showed hers off on Australian TV.
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