zovitsAug 22, 2023

I just realized how incredible it is that we don't have toes growing out of our ears.

https://lemmy.world/post/3638972

I just realized how incredible it is that we don't have toes growing out of our ears. - Lemmy.world

AFAIK it all boils down to the fact that during embryonal development our cells, which at that point were just a blob of undifferentiated autonomous chemical machines, somehow managed to unanimously agree upon the cardinal directions (up-down, left-right, front-back) for future development - and thanks to this, we don’t have toes growing out of our ears.

Show threadladiciusAug 22, 2023
That’s the core of evolution: Beings with unfavorable features simply don’t make it.
Show threadOtterAug 22, 2023

Too bad evolution is blind, and now our windpipes and digestive tracts cross over. It works, but it would have been nice if choking wasn’t a thing.

Other examples of interesting (sometimes called ‘unintelligent’) evolution might be how we walk upright, leading to complications with childbirth and back pain, blindspots because of our optical nerve, and or that recurrent nerve that does a random U-turn.

Evolution is basically millions of years of patches without ever getting a rebuild form the ground up. It’s mostly ok, but some bugs stick around

Show threadTheWeirdestCuntAug 22, 2023
This is just based on an offhand comment from a lecturer during a practical session during my time studying animal management in college, not directly from a biology lecturer so citation needed, but apparently rabbits don’t have a combined windpipe/digestive tract and it means that a blocked nose can kill them. So even if choking wasn’t a thing we’d have to worry about something blocking our noses and suffocating us.
Show threadOtter

Oh that’s actually a good point, so there are upsides as well.

Movies would also look really silly when someone would get killed by having their nose pinched closed

Aug 22, 2023 at 11:49pmWeb