NAVEL GAZING: Belly button fuzz has baffled many... until now

Austrian chemist Georg Steinhauser spent three years navel gazing in a bid to discover why the mysterious fuzz collects there.

By chemically analysing 503 pieces of navel fluff, he found dead skin, fat, sweat and dust mixed with cotton from clothing.

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Dr Steinhauser, of Vienna University of Technology, also established how the fuzz is guided navelwards - claiming that abdominal hair with a scaly structure directs lint towards it.

Writing in the journal Medical Hypotheses, he said: "The hair's scales act like a kind of barbed hooks.