Hymen, Appendix, and Wisdom Teeth

The hymen is there to keep bugs out.

...Edit, when humans didnt wear clothes it was more useful though.
 
actually if the resurch i herd about recently is right the apendix is VERY important. The theory goes that we are causing cancers and other problems because we keep killing off the gut flora (with antibotics). Now if that resurch is right then the implication is that the apendix is important because everytime you get diahrea you lose all your gut flora and the apendix alows it to be repopulated.....

...Appendix - likely a vestigial cecum, needed when we ate more cellulose. Nowadays since we cook our food (and generally eat easier to digest food) it's not needed....

are you sure billvon? :shrug: Asgard is a medical professional (in training)

My brother swallowed some BBs and a few days later he got appendicitis. They performed surgery found the BBs in his appendix.
 
As far as losing the wisdom teeth through evolution:

Can anyone come up with other parts lost through evolution?

Also, stands to reason that we really dont know how many humans throughout our time here have actually had them and how many didnt have them.
 
Also, i would add, since humans evolved (in theory) form much simpler form why would parts be added and then taken away?

Can you explain that?
 
I think we will get longer thumbs eventually. You can text faster and I think those people will do better career wise. Those people will marry people of the same socio-economic level and pass the trait on.

and that's my theory on that! LOL
 
are you sure billvon?

Am I sure it used to be a cecum? No, it's just one possibility - but a likely one, when you look at cecums in other animals that either eat cellulose or used to eat cellulose.

Am I sure it's not needed? Pretty sure, since appendectomy does not significantly affect survivability. (It does have other functions - every organ in your body has several - but it's pretty clear that the other functions are ancillary. Evolution uses everything for everything when it can.)
 
Two issues i have with the longer thumbs theory:

Thumbs are delicate protrusions and painful if broken plus they dont grow back like fingernails. As an aside, wouldnt it take millions of years, or at least thousands, then wouldnt it be safe to assume that by the time the change was fully implemented texting would be loooong gone?
 
Also, i would add, since humans evolved (in theory) form much simpler form why would parts be added and then taken away?

Because they are no longer needed. It happens all the time; fish, for example, will lose their eyes if they remain in dark caves for long enough. Eyes are no longer needed so they are evolved away.

Can anyone come up with other parts lost through evolution?

Fingers in bats. Thumbs in cats. Arms and legs in whales. Eyes in cave fish.
 
Two issues i have with the longer thumbs theory:

Thumbs are delicate protrusions and painful if broken plus they dont grow back like fingernails. As an aside, wouldnt it take millions of years, or at least thousands, then wouldnt it be safe to assume that by the time the change was fully implemented texting would be loooong gone?

And how long has it taken for wisdom teeth to disappear? How long have we been doing better dental care?

so no, not thousands of years
 
orleander as i said that would be my guess but it maybe wrong. However just because your period can penitrate when your 12 doesnt mean amneotic fluid can before your born, there are LOTS of changes between those times, the most ovious being your size.

As for the reason i think thats possible SOMETHING has to keep it out, there are no real barriers between the abdominal cavity and the felopian tubes (which is something i never knew till recently when it was mentioned you can get an ectopic pregancy anywhere in the abdominal cavity)

As for the resurch, its in its infancy and it didnt come from uni, it came from the ABC so it could turn out to be wrong but it certainly suggests that the apendix matters. If your interested there next step was to test gut flora from people in africa and the amazon who have never had a history of antibotic use to see if there flora was more diverse and then see if the cancer rates are the same or different.
 
Search: Human vestigiality for more examples.

My favorite is "tailbone", because it's still present in the language as well.

The computer mouse will soon visibly mutate the human hand, but future direct mind interfaces are developing. Other alts to negate that result?
 
Because they are no longer needed. It happens all the time; fish, for example, will lose their eyes if they remain in dark caves for long enough. Eyes are no longer needed so they are evolved away.

Thank you Bill.

I was just wondering why the head would evolve to have them to begin with...the extra teeth, i mean. Only to evolve to a smaller head anyway and also a larger brain for the smaller head.:shrug:
 
Thank you Bill.

I was just wondering why the head would evolve to have them to begin with...the extra teeth, i mean. Only to evolve to a smaller head anyway and also a larger brain for the smaller head.:shrug:
A bigger jaw is also a vestige of excessive cud (veg matter) chewing.
Search: wisdom teeth
 
that's a good one Keith. Some people are born with a tail

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Let me see if i can re-word that:

Before humans the pre-human evolved from smaller to larger.

Then evolved smaller again.

My question is why evolve larger to begin with?

But then all animals were larger at that time so being larger would be an advantage but how much of an advantage against a pre-historic animal? Very little if you ask me since compared to a dinosaur pre-humans size difference compared to now is nothing. For that matter even if the average human today were twice as strong still would be little match for even a large black bear in a toe to toe battle.
 
My question is why evolve larger to begin with?

Why do some organisms evolve to be larger? To get to different sources of food (like giraffes) to better protect their young (like bears) to better hunt (like big cats) to increase their food gathering ability (like humpback whales) to bear more young etc etc. There are a lot of reasons, all dependent on what environment the organism lives in.
 
If you don't use it, you loose it.
If it's getting smaller, it's leaving you.
 
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