Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Appendix
I've never been confident in the claim that the appendix is a useless vestigial organ. Everything else is doing something, sometimes many somethings at once. Why waste energy growing something useless? Maybe it is a bacteria reservoir?
They discovered that the appendix has evolved independently in several mammal lineages, over 30 separate times, and almost never disappears from a lineage once it has appeared. This suggests that the appendix likely serves an adaptive purpose.
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2 comments:
Hmmm. I'd had the impression that the appendix has been considered part of the immune system for a while now.
Showing my age...
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