All The Cool Superpowers Are Taken

ABC News: Humans With Amazing Senses

Fourteen-year-old Ben Underwood of Sacramento, Calif., is one of the few people known to use echolocation as a primary means of navigating the world on land. There's not even a hint of light reaching his brain. His eyes are artificial, but his brain has adapted to allow him to appraise his environment. He makes a 'clicking' sound to communicate with objects and people around him.

Scientists have discovered that in the brains of the blind, the visual cortex has not become useless, as they once believed. When blind people use another sense — touch or hearing, for example — to substitute for sight, the brain's visual cortex becomes active, even though no images reach it from the optic nerve. Echolocation creates its own images.

'I can hear that wall behind you over there. I can hear right there — the radio, and the fan,' Ben says.

Ben says every object in his life talks to him in ways that no one else can hear or understand.