Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Ileum, caecum and colon of rabbit, showing Appendix vermiformis on fully functional caecum The human vermiform appendix on the vestigial caecum. The appendix was once believed to be a vestige of a redundant organ that in ancestral species had digestive functions, much as it still does in extant species in which intestinal flora hydrolyze cellulose and similar indigestible plant materials. [10]
In humans, the vermiform appendix is sometimes called a vestigial structure as it has lost much of its ancestral digestive function.. Vestigiality is the retention, during the process of evolution, of genetically determined structures or attributes that have lost some or all of the ancestral function in a given species. [1]
Atavism can also be seen in humans who possess large teeth, like those of other primates. [9] In addition, a case of "snake heart", the presence of "coronary circulation and myocardial architecture [that closely] resemble those of the reptilian heart", has also been reported in medical literature. [ 10 ]
Human ear muscles that scientists long believed were vestigial are actually activated when we are trying to listen hard, a new study has found.. Although the auricular muscles changed the shape of ...
What makes a human body structure vestigial is that presently it is useless or almost useless, i.e. having no important function. Greensburger ( talk ) 16:49, 1 September 2011 (UTC) [ reply ] The references you listed do not backup your statements, they mention mainly the appendix, and a few other structures.
This phenomenon is an automatic-response mechanism that activates even before a human becomes consciously aware that a startling, unexpected or unknown sound has been "heard". [2] That this vestigial response occurs even before becoming consciously aware of a startling noise would explain why the function of ear-perking had evolved in animals.
[15] [16] A structure can be homologous at one level, but only analogous at another. Pterosaur , bird and bat wings are analogous as wings, but homologous as forelimbs because the organ served as a forearm (not a wing) in the last common ancestor of tetrapods , and evolved in different ways in the three groups.
Pharyngeal clefts resembling gill slits are transiently present during the embryonic stages of tetrapod development. The presence of pharyngeal arches and clefts in the neck of the developing human embryo famously led Ernst Haeckel to postulate that " ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny "; this hypothesis, while false, contains elements of truth ...