Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/16/the-human-body-is-full-of-evol.html
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Damn. I can’t tell you how many times I really could have used that.
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Would be a great party trick at least
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Always remember. Evolution isn’t so much about what works as it is about what doesn’t fail.
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What’s amazing is the ability of creationists to “explain” why these things are actually essential.
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Akin to the nictitating membrane that cats, dogs, and some other animals still have; cool.
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These kinds of evolutionary leftovers can give you a great head start if you ever need to re-evolve a lost trait. For example stick insects evolved flight, lost the ability to fly, and re-evolved the ability of flight multiple times over the course of their evolution.
So if we ever face sufficient evolutionary pressure to regain nictitating membranes it’s nice to know that the vestigal ones could always make a comeback over the next million years or so.
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Based on this, I figure hearts and brains have become vestigial structures.
EDIT: Now hold on a second – what’s this about humans evolving? I’m unconvinced.
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That third eyelid let’s you block out the devil! God gives it back to those who are worthy!
Now give money to my church so you might be worthy!
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Some people have this weird habit of personifying or ascribing motives to evolution. It doesn’t evaluate or organize or reward or anything like that; it’s just the name for the process that happens. Mutations that make it easier to pass on your genes get spread because animals with that mutation have more descendants. Mutations that make it less easy to pass on your genes do not get spread because animals with that mutation have fewer descendants. Mutations just happen; they are neither good nor bad, nor are they planned or working to a goal. Life just blindly leaps forward to a place where the life then looks back from and says “wow, what a plan!”
However, considering how many useless body parts have been discovered to have fairly good reasons for existing within my lifetime, I’d be exceptionally hesitant to describe anything as “useless”…
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No inner eyelid? It comes in handy on Vulcan.
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I can identify the one that serves no purpose for supporters of Nostradumbass…
Richard Dawkins once mentioned, that evolution has tried “intelligence” as a concept only once, so there is good reason to consider it a failure.
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Works as designed.
Nature’s leftover appendix almost killed me a few years ago.
I hate leftovers.
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#TeamPalmarisLongus! Woo!
Enjoy walking along the ground you evolutionarily-forward freaks!
We throw-backs will keep swinging from the trees!!
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Turns out appendixes (appendices?) aren’t as useless as we once thought:
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ladies and gentlemen … brother-in-laws everywhere.
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A cecum safe house for bugs had no reason not to trust me. Damn them! 
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