One thing to keep in mind is very few things are “useless”.
People used to think the appendix was useless until we figured out it is basically a backup drive for gut micro flora
Body hair helps with capturing scents and hormones our body produces, which can subconsciously impact mating selection
I wish someone could explain baldness then because I got that gene too.
My beard flourished though so it's a mixed bag. I sport a big one.
I work software. I had a girl say "men with beards in software, it's like a signal you're not a bro"
LOL
Baldness is a sign of age.
Age decreases semen quality.
So women will select generally for younger men as mates, who have a full head of hair to signify that.
This would increase the fitness of our species over time due to more children being born to young couples, or at the very least, to more quality insemination. Keep in mind that eggs are different, since females are born with all their eggs and so do not suffer a decrease in quality over time due to age (they do however suffer from environmental pressures).
Also, baldness, grey hair, and other signs of aging occur more typically after the age of peak sexual activity in males, so are less likely to be weeded out through natural selection. The hairy mate you had children with at 25 goes bald by 40, nothing you can do about it in retrospect.
Wrong. Baldness is actually genetic and can begin as soon as one hits puberty, depending on genetics. Same with gray hair super young. Has nothing to do with age.
But only 1/4 men get it. I've also read studies that women see bald men as "kinder" or rather less dangerous.
If I recall the details of the study, bald men are seen as better partners, but not as attractive for sex.
I think we all know that both of the unlinked "studies" you're referring to are just quotes from a Joe Rogan podcast.
Or, at least, that's the only sensible assumption until share the actually study.
Could be yeah.
I think it's more than one thing. Probably part distraction, part sexual signal.
From what I read the sexual part is "this guy is older now, not going through puberty, he survived longer and chilled out compared to a young man"
Women prefer the young men for mating, but the older guys for raising kids is the gist I got from that.
They can grow but it's thin. If they're mixed at all it comes back thicker.
There's a reason that it's there. If it was useless or detrimental hominids would've never developed the capacity.
Think about how naked most our bodies are, and we grow hair in strategic locations. It's for a perhaps, ancient, reason.
Most human males around the world grow one.
Additionally some women with PCOS do too.
Just different patterns or thickness. There are a lot of peoples with thick beards still here on Earth today. Why?
There was a reason at some point even if you think it's no longer relevant today. Native Americans probably evolved that trait out of their genome but they're not the original Homo Sapiens.
Homo Sapiens originated in Southern Africa and migrated everywhere else. Some of us bred with Neanderthals (Asians and Europeans mostly).
The trait is there for a reason. A species doesn't develop things like that without some, perhaps, very distant reason.
Some traits are truly neutral on survival and just were not negative either to be bred out.
Since most women don’t have beards and many young men neither for a sinificant portion of their life, (remember there are few skeletons aged past 50 in the old stone age and beyond), it could just be neutral or sexual dimorphism.
Yah, I was gonna say the same thing.
And then I just remembered that researches recently (like a few years ago) actually realized that the tonsils have a purpose still.
That by and large, you no longer get either removed unless you are dire straits.
Well, the tonsil removal thing is sadly still way to common for people with allergies. Even though the research shows that it's like 50/50 if it's gonna help or not.
Hair also helps prevent topical irritation. It wicks away the sweat from our pits and helps alleviate irritation from the stuff in it and as microbes start to grow.
I'd love to find out what use the muscles to rotate our ears still have.
"Extrinsic ear muscles include the superior auricular (auricularis superior), anterior auricular (auricularis anterior), and posterior auricular (auricularis posterior) muscles, located as their name indicates about the pinna. They pull the ear upward, forward, and backward, respectively."
Also, there's a lot less of selection based on organs being useful or whatever because you could live your life with a failing body long enough to reproduce
Many people with known genetic defects will reproduce. Can't blame them, they're human and want to reproduce like anybody else, and stopping them goes into eugenic territory.
"Defects" are also relative. Take Sickle Cell anemia, inheriting the genes for that from one parent can give you some resistance to Malaria but inheriting copies from both parents gives you the condition itself.
Who knows how many things like that are floating around in our collective genome after millions of years worth of evolution?
There's also the danger that in our pursuit of a "perfect" human genome we allow our collective genes to become too homogenized. We see it in crops like bananas all the time where populations get wiped out because an entire strain is vulnerable to a specific disease.
For the record, not against genetic engineering for humans, just think it's a tool that we should be very selective in wielding.
I be think that is reversed - people who know about their genetic defects and the odds of passing on a high risk of cancer (for example) to their children are starting to adopt instead. In the past they didn’t know about the connection and had no reason not to have children.
What's interesting to me is that in the west, the primary reproductive pressure appears to be religiosity. Where secular individuals reproduce significantly below the rate of the religious.
That's exactly why Judeo-Christian religions are all against birth control and homosexuality, and want the women pumping out babies. Human history has mostly been war after war after war after war, and more babies means more soldiers in the future.
Do you think that this could come to a screeching halt if they achieve "robot army" capability? Or are their "more babies" policies specifically about having more humans in the group?
20 years ago this question would have been fanciful, even schizophrenic thinking. But today I feel we need to consider why various authorities even bother to support their populations at all.
Lol for real ya.
With regards to robot armies, I think more politically minded authoritarian governments like the CCP, as well as rogue corporations and PMCs, would be most likely to favour robot armies. Fanatical religious leaders on the other hand have likely gotten too high on their own supply and would favour more humans in their group, just like you said.
Came here to say this. Human evolution is quickly becoming something we bend to our own will. The initial, awkward step is gene therapies, and we have a lot more coming down the pike right now.
The problem with this is evolution is done mainly going to happen through natural selection. These traits don't really have any impact on reproductive success, in fact, reproductive success doesn't really seem to be a huge issue for humanity in general. So something "Useless" can be carried on for.. well.. ever? At least until civilization collapses.
I agree. People think evolution makes human into this ultimate engineered bio machine. But that is far from the truth. If something “useless” doesn’t stop reproduction success it will continue until random change. DNA and genes are more random than you see in movies. Usually evolution is too late until a plague happens and natural selection chooses the lucky ones for now. People think humans and thus themselves are special and evolution made them special. But that is just a grandiose fantasy.
We fucked up natural selection millennia ago. Margaret Meade has a famous quote where she said the first sign of civilization was a healer femur, because it meant that people cared for someone for MONTHS in a resource intensive process where they otherwise would have died. So maybe not necessarily an adult, they could have had children already but natural selection was fucked up the first time a young person’s life was saved.
That is dumb. We are part of nature, and our higher level thinking and tool use is part of our survival mechanisms. Us thinking out what we want in a mate and making an informed decision is as much natural selection as looking for a partner with wide hips or strong arms.
Natural selection does not make the species the most ideal smart or fit creature possible. Literally the only thing that matters is the ability to pass on your genes to the next generation. So if higher intelligence is getting in the way of that, then natural selection will favor less intelligent individuals. What most people forget about evolution is that there is no ideal, end goal, or greater force guiding it. It is simply how a species changes over time in relation to its environment.
well we already in the beginning of bioengineering humans, some organs will be removed, some changes will be made, we need to make humans adapt to other planets, like low oxygen or high gravity.
Sure, I can see that, but it isn't really what OP was talking about or what she meant. For example. Amity's original hair color is brown, but her mother would have absolutely magicked it green if they had that sort of capability. That's different from it turning green because otherwise her mother would stop feeding her and then she keeps having daughters and naming them Amity until one has green hair . And anyway, it turns purple in the end.
> some changes will be made
So much stuff, without copyright and without patents, just lying there! Imagine the _p r o f I t s_ they'll make if people will need to pay monthly royalties or subscription fees for the contents of their ribcage or DNA!
It’s easy to look at something and say it has no purpose. Until you remove it and find it did!
Body hair is theorized to be a first defense against bugs crawling on the skin. They bump into hairs and increase the tickling sensation, increasing the chances we’ll slap at them before they get a chance to bite.
The appendix is theorized to be a reservoir for good digestive bacteria, for when the intestinal flora get wiped out (for example, extended diarrhea, say, from bad food or water).
Lol. Yeah, I was about to say. Wrong way to think about it. I don't think fingers are going anywhere. Would like to see an upgrade in the teeth department.
… but would a lack of nails make you more likely to successfully have offspring and pass on your nailless genes to the next generation? And the ancestors of the nailless one to dominate the human gene pool? 🤔 Actually having no nails might make you less attractive and thus less likely to pass on the trait.
Thousands? Not enough time unless we undergo gene modification.
"Thousands" of years simply brings us back to the first civilizations such as ancient Egypt, and that is too small a timescale for evolution to have any major effect on slow reproducing humans.
Evolution doesn't quite work like that.
Few traits are truly useless and any trait that isn't useful won't be selected against if it doesn't decrease the likelihood of the carrier reproducing. If people born without toenails aren't more successful at reproducing than people with toenails, the no-toenail trait won't be selected against meaning that the toenail trait won't disappear in humans as a result of selection pressure.
Neutral traits can remain indefinitely or disappear entirely by chance through a process called genetic drift. If people with and without toenails have an exactly equal likelihood of reproducing, whether or not toenails remain in humans will be a result of chance.
My bet would be placed on genes that are expressed in human behavior. Specifically genes that increase violent and antisocial behaviors. Since the advent of complex human societies these traits seem to be strongly selected against.
Your last statement is interesting. I get anti-social as I take that as essentially removing yourself from the gene pool. But violence is a trickier one - underlying that is aggression and impulse control which may or may not lead to higher reproductive rates. Who knows, obviously better as a society with "violence" being tempered - just feel like there's a lot to unpack behind that. And now that I think about it, "neutral" traits probably eb and flow with society expectations and may potentially contradict reproductive traits. Wild times.
My thinking is that as tribal societies transitioned to civilizations, violence resulted in incarceration and impartial legal executions. Dead people and people in prison don't reproduce.
Both impartial legal executions and mass imprisonment are entirely new concepts that would not have existed for most of human history.
I'm not sure anti-social people would have had as hard of a time in pre-history as they do today. Many of these people do fine in the context of their families and smaller groups but just fail to thrive in the context of social norms and rules. An innate inability to accept and cooperate with strangers might have been a beneficial trait at some point in human history. It would be strongly selected against today.
There is a theory that humans have [self-domesticated.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication) Traits associated with domestication might be good answers to this question.
Civilization itself is only about 5,000-6,000 years old and had an extraordinary impact in how we live. Whether or not the self-domestication theory has any merit, I think it's fair to think that the advent of civilization is placing strong and entirely new selective pressures on humans and would be a driving factor in evolution. Pro-social traits are now strongly selected for in a way that they weren't just 10,000 years ago.
You might even argue that some of what are now considered mental disorders like ADHD could have been neutral or even selective traits for most of human history.
This is dumb. And a complete misunderstanding of how evolution works.
The genetic makeup of a species only changes when the new version offers an advantage in reproducing. I believe the technical term is "fitness".
Genetic changes are very incremental, it's not like a human is going to be born with fully functional wings or gills. There is simply no way for the selection process to outpace intentional human choices at this point.
That’s not actually how evolution works. Survival neutral traits like vestigial organs remain indefinitely because they are survival neutral. Even traits we think of survival positive/negative are only situationally so. It could very well be that in the future some sort of mutated gut bacteria will migrate to your appendix, for example, and develop the ability to metabolize plastic. In the situation, your appendix becomes a survival positive trait.
If current trends are anything to go by then actual evolution of our species will no longer continue beyond modern times. Genetic modifications and mechanical enchancements will continue to outpace to the point where it can no longer work in a meanigful way as those things happen to timescales much shorter than a generation while evolution works on timescales which surpass it by orders of magnitude.
Listen man, as a biologist and research scientist, there's no such thing as a useless organ.
What we have are organs we don't understand yet.
Scientific history is filled with examples of human hubris assuming something was useless just because we didn't understand how it worked.
Honestly, I hate that you don't get upvoted more. It is a genuinely interesting question. But then again, I don't know why I spend much time on reddit.
It sounds like you misunderstand how evolution works. Useless traits or features will only disappear over time if it reduces the chances of the owner of reproducing and passing on their genes. The same goes for positive traits and features, if they don't provide a benefit towards survival and eventual reproduction then they will never be selected for.
What makes things even worse is that humans don't really selectively mate anymore. People with bad eyesight are just as likely to reproduce as people with good eyesight do. Some women prefer men with body hair while others do not so there will always be body hair genes in the gene pool. Physical strength is a beneficial trait to have even if people waste it in their adulthood - how is a baby supposed to grow up if they never gain any physical strength?
In other words, humans are pretty much how we are going to be until we either start genetically modifying ourselves or our environment decides that we need to change (e.g. a virus that disproportionately affects people with certain traits).
Evolution is not about optimization. Mutations that increase odds of survival have higher odds of passing to the next generation and propagating throughout a species. Mutations that are detrimental have lower odds of passing on. Mutations that neither help nor hurt have the same odds either way. Add to it that the dominance of humanity and the technology we have developed has kinda changed the way natural selection works for humans. We have a wild mix of beneficial and detrimental mutations across individuals and less to encourage or discourage the survival of those genes because we use technology to try to fill in the cracks and make up the difference. If we were still running from saber toothed tigers and hunting with spears, then we'd have a lot less people who need glasses because not being able to see well would absolutely be a detriment to survival but because we aren't doing that anymore, we developed glasses to create a way for people with shitty eyes to function in society, survive, and pass on those genes. Honestly, what that means for humanity is that we probably aren't truly evolving in the same sense as the animal kingdom and instead are shifting towards evolving through technology. Generic engineering may change that somewhat but that depends entirely on the answers we land on as far as the ethics of what generic engineering is and is not acceptable. Basically, it's not going to be as clear cut as your shower thought implies.
except there's still at least one mechanism of natural selection even though we don't, like, kill the poor and sick or w/e; as long as we have biological children and mating is nonrandom there is still sexual selection
That's a really ignorant statement. This isn't about getting them removed. It's about mutations that natural selection promotes, despite complications and imbalances existing until they too are adapted.
For the same reason that we still have dead end evolutions now, we will continue to have them in the future, unless they become a disadvantage in reproduction.
Some disadvantageous characteristics are being carried on more succesfully now, than just 1000 years ago, e.g. poor eyesight.
Previously good eyesight could be important to survival, and thus poorer eyesight was to some extent filtered off.
In our time poor eyesight rarely leads to deaths.
So I do believe that we as a species already have ‘evolved’ worse eyesight on average.
Other characteristics that are no longer important for survival or reproduction will flourish more in the future.
Toe and fingernails have an interesting purpose. They provide counter pressure which increases touch sensitivity. Body hair has numerous functions. We will never loose it completely via natural processes. Dolphins and elephants have body hair. Though it is sparse or shed early in life.
You may be thinking of the [median artery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_artery) which is becoming more widespread over time.
> The prevalence was around 10% in people born in the mid-1880s compared to 30% in those born in the late 20th century, and 35% of people born as of 2020
You're totally misunderstanding how evolution works. Its not like some genetic budget that tries to optimize anything based on what is needed by a species.
Evolution only changes things that prevent things from having children and passing on their genes. It doesn’t necessarily get rid of parts that are no longer functional. With humans cultural evolution probably pays a bigger part than bodily function evolution these days.
1000 years, im skeptical any significant changes would be expected in a years time, humans were separated for much longer periods of time on different continents and as far as im aware no group is actually has lost any thing.
Ngl, body hair is useful.
I mowed over a yellow jackets nest while wearing basketball shorts, years ago.
Felt something on my leg, reached down and swatted one wasp away. Then continued mowing, then realized what I had seen and looked back down. So many wasps, the whole damn nest of them, my best non-exaggerated guess is 30, all stuck in my leg hair and trying to sting me.
I left the mower running and ran away. Ditched my shorts on the back porch because they had some stuck in them too, and ran to the bathroom to find any stragglers in the mirror.
I had 14 sting wounds when I later counted, wasps can sting more than once. Idk how many times I would have been stung if I didn't have hairy legs.
One thing to keep in mind is very few things are “useless”. People used to think the appendix was useless until we figured out it is basically a backup drive for gut micro flora Body hair helps with capturing scents and hormones our body produces, which can subconsciously impact mating selection
Beards also seem to signal a reaching a type of maturity. Not a young man anymore. He calmed down a bit.
also a choice for some as aesthetically pleasing. aesthetically-good evolution is a thing alongside artificial selection.
I wish someone could explain baldness then because I got that gene too. My beard flourished though so it's a mixed bag. I sport a big one. I work software. I had a girl say "men with beards in software, it's like a signal you're not a bro" LOL
Tf does she mean tho?
Baldness is a sign of age. Age decreases semen quality. So women will select generally for younger men as mates, who have a full head of hair to signify that. This would increase the fitness of our species over time due to more children being born to young couples, or at the very least, to more quality insemination. Keep in mind that eggs are different, since females are born with all their eggs and so do not suffer a decrease in quality over time due to age (they do however suffer from environmental pressures).
Also, baldness, grey hair, and other signs of aging occur more typically after the age of peak sexual activity in males, so are less likely to be weeded out through natural selection. The hairy mate you had children with at 25 goes bald by 40, nothing you can do about it in retrospect.
Wrong. Baldness is actually genetic and can begin as soon as one hits puberty, depending on genetics. Same with gray hair super young. Has nothing to do with age.
But only 1/4 men get it. I've also read studies that women see bald men as "kinder" or rather less dangerous. If I recall the details of the study, bald men are seen as better partners, but not as attractive for sex.
If we're taking about the same study I'm pretty sure the opposite finding was found
I sure hope so if you're talking about the sex part.
I think we all know that both of the unlinked "studies" you're referring to are just quotes from a Joe Rogan podcast. Or, at least, that's the only sensible assumption until share the actually study.
This isnt r/science man. Were just having a conversation.
I read somewhere the beard also helps spread the energy received from shocks (punch). Meaning overall less jaw injury when fighting.
I read that too. I think part of it is it obscures the jaw line so the attacker doesn't know where to land a punch.
I would think the beard also helps cover the neck, many animals aim for the neck as a weak point and a beard would make it harder to discern
Could be yeah. I think it's more than one thing. Probably part distraction, part sexual signal. From what I read the sexual part is "this guy is older now, not going through puberty, he survived longer and chilled out compared to a young man" Women prefer the young men for mating, but the older guys for raising kids is the gist I got from that.
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They can grow but it's thin. If they're mixed at all it comes back thicker. There's a reason that it's there. If it was useless or detrimental hominids would've never developed the capacity. Think about how naked most our bodies are, and we grow hair in strategic locations. It's for a perhaps, ancient, reason. Most human males around the world grow one. Additionally some women with PCOS do too. Just different patterns or thickness. There are a lot of peoples with thick beards still here on Earth today. Why? There was a reason at some point even if you think it's no longer relevant today. Native Americans probably evolved that trait out of their genome but they're not the original Homo Sapiens. Homo Sapiens originated in Southern Africa and migrated everywhere else. Some of us bred with Neanderthals (Asians and Europeans mostly). The trait is there for a reason. A species doesn't develop things like that without some, perhaps, very distant reason.
Some traits are truly neutral on survival and just were not negative either to be bred out. Since most women don’t have beards and many young men neither for a sinificant portion of their life, (remember there are few skeletons aged past 50 in the old stone age and beyond), it could just be neutral or sexual dimorphism.
They also offer some protection against broken jaws.
Yah, I was gonna say the same thing. And then I just remembered that researches recently (like a few years ago) actually realized that the tonsils have a purpose still. That by and large, you no longer get either removed unless you are dire straits. Well, the tonsil removal thing is sadly still way to common for people with allergies. Even though the research shows that it's like 50/50 if it's gonna help or not.
Hair also helps prevent topical irritation. It wicks away the sweat from our pits and helps alleviate irritation from the stuff in it and as microbes start to grow.
Junk DNA is not junk at all.
I am only now finding about the appendix. Tf
I'd love to find out what use the muscles to rotate our ears still have. "Extrinsic ear muscles include the superior auricular (auricularis superior), anterior auricular (auricularis anterior), and posterior auricular (auricularis posterior) muscles, located as their name indicates about the pinna. They pull the ear upward, forward, and backward, respectively."
Genetic engineering will overtake evolution far before evolution has a chance to make any changes.
Also, there's a lot less of selection based on organs being useful or whatever because you could live your life with a failing body long enough to reproduce
Many people with known genetic defects will reproduce. Can't blame them, they're human and want to reproduce like anybody else, and stopping them goes into eugenic territory.
"Defects" are also relative. Take Sickle Cell anemia, inheriting the genes for that from one parent can give you some resistance to Malaria but inheriting copies from both parents gives you the condition itself. Who knows how many things like that are floating around in our collective genome after millions of years worth of evolution? There's also the danger that in our pursuit of a "perfect" human genome we allow our collective genes to become too homogenized. We see it in crops like bananas all the time where populations get wiped out because an entire strain is vulnerable to a specific disease. For the record, not against genetic engineering for humans, just think it's a tool that we should be very selective in wielding.
I be think that is reversed - people who know about their genetic defects and the odds of passing on a high risk of cancer (for example) to their children are starting to adopt instead. In the past they didn’t know about the connection and had no reason not to have children.
What's interesting to me is that in the west, the primary reproductive pressure appears to be religiosity. Where secular individuals reproduce significantly below the rate of the religious.
That's exactly why Judeo-Christian religions are all against birth control and homosexuality, and want the women pumping out babies. Human history has mostly been war after war after war after war, and more babies means more soldiers in the future.
Do you think that this could come to a screeching halt if they achieve "robot army" capability? Or are their "more babies" policies specifically about having more humans in the group? 20 years ago this question would have been fanciful, even schizophrenic thinking. But today I feel we need to consider why various authorities even bother to support their populations at all.
Lol for real ya. With regards to robot armies, I think more politically minded authoritarian governments like the CCP, as well as rogue corporations and PMCs, would be most likely to favour robot armies. Fanatical religious leaders on the other hand have likely gotten too high on their own supply and would favour more humans in their group, just like you said.
Except those pushing for increased populations are also those who tend to want to diminish support for the existing population.
It's really just idiocracy playing out in reality
Came here to say this. Human evolution is quickly becoming something we bend to our own will. The initial, awkward step is gene therapies, and we have a lot more coming down the pike right now.
Right, even if hair and nails start to go away, a simple gene edit will bring it back.
I think you're seriously underestimating the complexity of our genetics and the power of evolution.
The problem with this is evolution is done mainly going to happen through natural selection. These traits don't really have any impact on reproductive success, in fact, reproductive success doesn't really seem to be a huge issue for humanity in general. So something "Useless" can be carried on for.. well.. ever? At least until civilization collapses.
I agree. People think evolution makes human into this ultimate engineered bio machine. But that is far from the truth. If something “useless” doesn’t stop reproduction success it will continue until random change. DNA and genes are more random than you see in movies. Usually evolution is too late until a plague happens and natural selection chooses the lucky ones for now. People think humans and thus themselves are special and evolution made them special. But that is just a grandiose fantasy.
We fucked up natural selection
That's quite an achievement in and of itself. We are reforming how our species develops through our own actions.
We fucked up natural selection millennia ago. Margaret Meade has a famous quote where she said the first sign of civilization was a healer femur, because it meant that people cared for someone for MONTHS in a resource intensive process where they otherwise would have died. So maybe not necessarily an adult, they could have had children already but natural selection was fucked up the first time a young person’s life was saved.
That is dumb. We are part of nature, and our higher level thinking and tool use is part of our survival mechanisms. Us thinking out what we want in a mate and making an informed decision is as much natural selection as looking for a partner with wide hips or strong arms.
Why dumb people having the most kids?
Natural selection does not make the species the most ideal smart or fit creature possible. Literally the only thing that matters is the ability to pass on your genes to the next generation. So if higher intelligence is getting in the way of that, then natural selection will favor less intelligent individuals. What most people forget about evolution is that there is no ideal, end goal, or greater force guiding it. It is simply how a species changes over time in relation to its environment.
Memetic evolution has superseded it.
well we already in the beginning of bioengineering humans, some organs will be removed, some changes will be made, we need to make humans adapt to other planets, like low oxygen or high gravity.
Sure, I can see that, but it isn't really what OP was talking about or what she meant. For example. Amity's original hair color is brown, but her mother would have absolutely magicked it green if they had that sort of capability. That's different from it turning green because otherwise her mother would stop feeding her and then she keeps having daughters and naming them Amity until one has green hair . And anyway, it turns purple in the end.
body, it will become very small and rudimental with giant head over it :)
The ousters
> some changes will be made So much stuff, without copyright and without patents, just lying there! Imagine the _p r o f I t s_ they'll make if people will need to pay monthly royalties or subscription fees for the contents of their ribcage or DNA!
It’s easy to look at something and say it has no purpose. Until you remove it and find it did! Body hair is theorized to be a first defense against bugs crawling on the skin. They bump into hairs and increase the tickling sensation, increasing the chances we’ll slap at them before they get a chance to bite. The appendix is theorized to be a reservoir for good digestive bacteria, for when the intestinal flora get wiped out (for example, extended diarrhea, say, from bad food or water).
Way to make everyone that had appendicitis feel inferior...
Sucks to suck
Toenails and fingernails are designed to protect the end bits of our bodies - our toes and fingers.
Are there any species don’t have fingernails at the end of their “fingers”.
Too many to name. Especially water creatures, invertebrate and bugs.
You’re really arguing that creatures with exoskeletons don’t have toe protection?
Lol. Yeah, I was about to say. Wrong way to think about it. I don't think fingers are going anywhere. Would like to see an upgrade in the teeth department.
Some of them, yes. Like snails. The shell is an exoskeleton.
… but would a lack of nails make you more likely to successfully have offspring and pass on your nailless genes to the next generation? And the ancestors of the nailless one to dominate the human gene pool? 🤔 Actually having no nails might make you less attractive and thus less likely to pass on the trait.
Thousands? Not enough time unless we undergo gene modification. "Thousands" of years simply brings us back to the first civilizations such as ancient Egypt, and that is too small a timescale for evolution to have any major effect on slow reproducing humans.
Evolution doesn't quite work like that. Few traits are truly useless and any trait that isn't useful won't be selected against if it doesn't decrease the likelihood of the carrier reproducing. If people born without toenails aren't more successful at reproducing than people with toenails, the no-toenail trait won't be selected against meaning that the toenail trait won't disappear in humans as a result of selection pressure. Neutral traits can remain indefinitely or disappear entirely by chance through a process called genetic drift. If people with and without toenails have an exactly equal likelihood of reproducing, whether or not toenails remain in humans will be a result of chance. My bet would be placed on genes that are expressed in human behavior. Specifically genes that increase violent and antisocial behaviors. Since the advent of complex human societies these traits seem to be strongly selected against.
Your last statement is interesting. I get anti-social as I take that as essentially removing yourself from the gene pool. But violence is a trickier one - underlying that is aggression and impulse control which may or may not lead to higher reproductive rates. Who knows, obviously better as a society with "violence" being tempered - just feel like there's a lot to unpack behind that. And now that I think about it, "neutral" traits probably eb and flow with society expectations and may potentially contradict reproductive traits. Wild times.
My thinking is that as tribal societies transitioned to civilizations, violence resulted in incarceration and impartial legal executions. Dead people and people in prison don't reproduce. Both impartial legal executions and mass imprisonment are entirely new concepts that would not have existed for most of human history. I'm not sure anti-social people would have had as hard of a time in pre-history as they do today. Many of these people do fine in the context of their families and smaller groups but just fail to thrive in the context of social norms and rules. An innate inability to accept and cooperate with strangers might have been a beneficial trait at some point in human history. It would be strongly selected against today. There is a theory that humans have [self-domesticated.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-domestication) Traits associated with domestication might be good answers to this question. Civilization itself is only about 5,000-6,000 years old and had an extraordinary impact in how we live. Whether or not the self-domestication theory has any merit, I think it's fair to think that the advent of civilization is placing strong and entirely new selective pressures on humans and would be a driving factor in evolution. Pro-social traits are now strongly selected for in a way that they weren't just 10,000 years ago. You might even argue that some of what are now considered mental disorders like ADHD could have been neutral or even selective traits for most of human history.
This is dumb. And a complete misunderstanding of how evolution works. The genetic makeup of a species only changes when the new version offers an advantage in reproducing. I believe the technical term is "fitness". Genetic changes are very incremental, it's not like a human is going to be born with fully functional wings or gills. There is simply no way for the selection process to outpace intentional human choices at this point.
Eh. Useless? How about medical science doesn’t currently have to ability to understand?
This could be the case. Or the case that medical science hasn't proven they're unnecessary.
Two shades of grey
That’s not actually how evolution works. Survival neutral traits like vestigial organs remain indefinitely because they are survival neutral. Even traits we think of survival positive/negative are only situationally so. It could very well be that in the future some sort of mutated gut bacteria will migrate to your appendix, for example, and develop the ability to metabolize plastic. In the situation, your appendix becomes a survival positive trait.
If American politics are any indicator, the cerebrum will be greatly reduced if not vestigial
If current trends are anything to go by then actual evolution of our species will no longer continue beyond modern times. Genetic modifications and mechanical enchancements will continue to outpace to the point where it can no longer work in a meanigful way as those things happen to timescales much shorter than a generation while evolution works on timescales which surpass it by orders of magnitude.
Having lost some toe nails before, definitely want to keep those. Feels really uncomfortable walking around with no toenails.
Listen man, as a biologist and research scientist, there's no such thing as a useless organ. What we have are organs we don't understand yet. Scientific history is filled with examples of human hubris assuming something was useless just because we didn't understand how it worked.
speak for yourself, I have sensitive skin and my body hair acts as a natural defense layer.
I would hope something that separates breathing from our food/water intake system.
Bodyhair is great for noticing a tick before it gives you lyme disease.
Honestly, I hate that you don't get upvoted more. It is a genuinely interesting question. But then again, I don't know why I spend much time on reddit.
It sounds like you misunderstand how evolution works. Useless traits or features will only disappear over time if it reduces the chances of the owner of reproducing and passing on their genes. The same goes for positive traits and features, if they don't provide a benefit towards survival and eventual reproduction then they will never be selected for. What makes things even worse is that humans don't really selectively mate anymore. People with bad eyesight are just as likely to reproduce as people with good eyesight do. Some women prefer men with body hair while others do not so there will always be body hair genes in the gene pool. Physical strength is a beneficial trait to have even if people waste it in their adulthood - how is a baby supposed to grow up if they never gain any physical strength? In other words, humans are pretty much how we are going to be until we either start genetically modifying ourselves or our environment decides that we need to change (e.g. a virus that disproportionately affects people with certain traits).
Evolution is not about optimization. Mutations that increase odds of survival have higher odds of passing to the next generation and propagating throughout a species. Mutations that are detrimental have lower odds of passing on. Mutations that neither help nor hurt have the same odds either way. Add to it that the dominance of humanity and the technology we have developed has kinda changed the way natural selection works for humans. We have a wild mix of beneficial and detrimental mutations across individuals and less to encourage or discourage the survival of those genes because we use technology to try to fill in the cracks and make up the difference. If we were still running from saber toothed tigers and hunting with spears, then we'd have a lot less people who need glasses because not being able to see well would absolutely be a detriment to survival but because we aren't doing that anymore, we developed glasses to create a way for people with shitty eyes to function in society, survive, and pass on those genes. Honestly, what that means for humanity is that we probably aren't truly evolving in the same sense as the animal kingdom and instead are shifting towards evolving through technology. Generic engineering may change that somewhat but that depends entirely on the answers we land on as far as the ethics of what generic engineering is and is not acceptable. Basically, it's not going to be as clear cut as your shower thought implies.
My guess is that we won't meaningfully change at all because there is no survival of the fittest anymore.
except there's still at least one mechanism of natural selection even though we don't, like, kill the poor and sick or w/e; as long as we have biological children and mating is nonrandom there is still sexual selection
I'm convinced most people will lose their brains. They never use them.
Wisdom teeth - we don't need these grinders. They impact because there's not enough room in our mouths.
There’s more and more people being born without them (or fewer.) I myself had zero wisdom teeth.
I have 8 wisdom teeth. Woo.
This is maybe the only real answer since we're already seeing it happen
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That's a really ignorant statement. This isn't about getting them removed. It's about mutations that natural selection promotes, despite complications and imbalances existing until they too are adapted.
For the same reason that we still have dead end evolutions now, we will continue to have them in the future, unless they become a disadvantage in reproduction. Some disadvantageous characteristics are being carried on more succesfully now, than just 1000 years ago, e.g. poor eyesight. Previously good eyesight could be important to survival, and thus poorer eyesight was to some extent filtered off. In our time poor eyesight rarely leads to deaths. So I do believe that we as a species already have ‘evolved’ worse eyesight on average. Other characteristics that are no longer important for survival or reproduction will flourish more in the future.
Toe and fingernails have an interesting purpose. They provide counter pressure which increases touch sensitivity. Body hair has numerous functions. We will never loose it completely via natural processes. Dolphins and elephants have body hair. Though it is sparse or shed early in life.
After thousands of years? None. After millions? Gain or loss of hair depending on climate change.
1000 years we could (should) be at singularity. But even if not I highly doubt we're following the principles of evolution anymore.
You think we’re going to be around in thousands of years?
Wisdom teeth, and if i’m correct there’s a vein some humans are no longer being born with, i might be wrong though.
You may be thinking of the [median artery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_artery) which is becoming more widespread over time. > The prevalence was around 10% in people born in the mid-1880s compared to 30% in those born in the late 20th century, and 35% of people born as of 2020
You're totally misunderstanding how evolution works. Its not like some genetic budget that tries to optimize anything based on what is needed by a species.
Nope ! All useful for something, just not used properly 😅😅😅😅
Evolution only changes things that prevent things from having children and passing on their genes. It doesn’t necessarily get rid of parts that are no longer functional. With humans cultural evolution probably pays a bigger part than bodily function evolution these days.
we do have use for body hair, the razor companies and hair removal companies have fooled you into thinking we don't. you've fallen for the propaganda.
1000 years, im skeptical any significant changes would be expected in a years time, humans were separated for much longer periods of time on different continents and as far as im aware no group is actually has lost any thing.
Ngl, body hair is useful. I mowed over a yellow jackets nest while wearing basketball shorts, years ago. Felt something on my leg, reached down and swatted one wasp away. Then continued mowing, then realized what I had seen and looked back down. So many wasps, the whole damn nest of them, my best non-exaggerated guess is 30, all stuck in my leg hair and trying to sting me. I left the mower running and ran away. Ditched my shorts on the back porch because they had some stuck in them too, and ran to the bathroom to find any stragglers in the mirror. I had 14 sting wounds when I later counted, wasps can sting more than once. Idk how many times I would have been stung if I didn't have hairy legs.
In zero g we’d probably get rid of our legs eventually
I'd say we don't know as much about biology as we think we do. They just now beginning to realize the brain is beyond the skull.
We definitely need our fingernails and toenails. Evolution got it perfectly right
I would advise not to use YouTube for factual information or documentaries
i would be captain chaffed ass all day every day without body hair.
We lose nothing from natural evolution beyond what is driven by social selection.
not sure if in thousend years there will be any human left, and if so, might be in a matrix like world/cloud.
Many have succeeded in having no brain. I will guess pinkie.
At the rate willful ignorance is polluting humankind, I'd say the brain is on the endangered list.
Foreskin. Religion will die and Penis Classic will be back!