Spare parts
Some of you are the future of the human race… some of you are just relics… evolutionarily speaking.
Wisdom teeth, for example, are not much use to the modern human. Indeed, only 5% of us have a working set of wisdom teeth. Many people have them removed, and those on the cutting edge of dental evolution don’t have any at all.
As it happens, I have two sets. They’re called supernumerary teeth (and having them is called Hyperdontia), and they provide no practical advantage at all. They haven’t made me any wiser and I’m unlikely to need to chew my way through a substantial amount of vegetation. Conversely, Em has none… should we produce offspring I’ll be interested to find out how many they end up with.
Then there’s the classic – The appendix. Again, not much use unless you spend your life chewing through cellulose. Unlike wisdom teeth, most of us are born with an appendix, though far fewer die with one. There’s potential for this unnecessary part to be phased out.
There are a couple of muscles too, some of you may have them, others might not. They are remnant from a different lifestyle, one where we climbed a lot and grasped with our feet. The Plantaris muscle, located in our feet and about the size of a pencil, is missing in about 9% of the population. It barely does anything for the remaining 91% except provide tissue for muscle transplants. Similarly the Palmaris muscle, located in your arm towards the wrist, is mostly redundant.
I could go on; the coccyx, ear muscles, body hair, paranasal sinuses…
The point I’m trying to make, I think, is that it’s strange really, to think that we were designed this way… almost as if we didn’t make it passed the prototype phase or that we are a manufacturing error… that when humans were created, some 6000 years ago we were given organs and muscles that we would never, and could never, use. Perhaps God included Plantaris and Palmaris for the surgeons, along with the appendix to keep them busy… perhaps he felt the need to financially help dentists too – or did Satan create dentists, I can never remember – with wisdom teeth.
So that’s the easiest way to tell the difference between flat-pack furniture and a human: When you assemble flat-pack furniture you always end up with some spare bits, however when you assemble a human you add a few bits that aren’t needed.
Ty on 
Ben on
“Well the devil she made sweet candy,
took 6 days and nights to dream,
on the 7th day she rested,
woke up early and made ice cream.
Now the devil she must be a dentist,
with deep jawbreaker eyes,
red rope hair, gum drop lips,
cotton candy thighs!”
OH! Now do Lump!
“Gump sat alone on a bench in the park
“My name is Forrest,” he’d casually remark
Waitin’ for the bus with his hands in his pockets
He just kept sayin’ life is like a box of chocolates
He’s Gump, He’s Gump
What’s in his head?
He’s Gump, He’s Gump, He’s Gump
Is he in-bred?”
Lump sat alone in a boggy marsh
Totally motionless except for her heart
Mud flowed up into lumps pyjammas
She totally confused all the passing piranhas
Shes lump shes lump
Shes in my head
Shes lump shes lump shes lump
She might be dead
Lump lingered last in line for brains
And the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane
Small things so sad that birds could land
Is lump fast asleep or rockin out with the band
Gotta love Presidents of the United States of America.
Don’t we all?
I still like Weird Al’s take on that song better though.
Mmm, dude, did you just eat Satan?
That song’s going to be stuck in my head all day now.
Hahaha! I eat Satan for breakfast.
My cousin ruptured his spleen and went into surgery. The doctor’s were a bit mystified to find a second spleen behind the first one. I guess spleen 1 blocked spleen 2 during x-rays and no one knew it was there.
I had my wisdom teeth removed but I do have an extra rib. I could make another Eve if it came down to it.
I was reading about the extra rib thing too… that’s pretty cool, but just not quite as cool as having two spleens, no matter how troublesome.
Does the extra rib thing have any benefits/problems?
But honestly, having an extra this, or a missing that, it’s not as cool as how we can fix it. I met a guy while I was on the Appalachian Trail that had undergone pollicization surgery after an accident with a corn husker that had removed his thumb and part of his index finger. It was amazing — completely seamless, I didn’t even notice when he shook my hand. it was like he’d only had three fingers all his life.
According to Philippa below, the extra rib thing can sometimes cause problems. But it has never bothered me. Never came in handy, either.
My cousin had extra ribs, but they caused her to have a blood clot (the doctors were at first mystified as to the reason: she was only 16) so she had them removed.
Yikes. Well I only have one extra and I’ve made it to 27 without problems so maybe it won’t try to attack me.
I don’t have wisdom teeth, an appendix, or tonsils.
I also only have one adenoid.
I am not completely assembled :[
You should describe yourself as ’streamlined’ at least in terms of evolution and the human form.
Either that or it’s a rather severe weight-loss programme.
Seems lots of people have extra body parts, it reminds me a bit of the three eyed fish from the symptoms, yes it could be evolutionary, or it could be your microwave.
do you mean the Simpsons?
i thought microwaves pretty much just jiggled water molecules around
it seems these spare body parts are prone to revolt.
exempting,of course, that muscle that allows you to wiggle your ears.
*wiggle*
I’d quite like to have wiggly ears, or even better ears I can rotate… still, being a bit deaf it wouldn’t be much use.
*tries to wiggle back but fails*
Vestigial body parts are such a great argument against Creationism… I’m surprised it’s not used more often.
They’re also a mediocre/poor argument against evolution.
And I’ve discovered that if there’s one thing religious sorts have liked to do to me, it’s throw my arguments back in my face.
It’s only an argument against evolution if you don’t understand what evolution is. Next time someone tries to throw your argument back in your face, throw their ignorance back into theirs.
or a copy of Mr.Darwin’s book,
it makes a nice sound
whoops ya, I meant to say the Simpson’s there and ideally microwaves just wiggle water molecules around but I’m not sure how much water is in a pacemaker and pacemakers don’t mix well with microwaves.
it’s just occurred to me what happens if you leave a bit of metal in the microwave, I’ve got no idea why that happens, but I’m sure it’s got something to do with it
Yay! I have perfectly functioning wisdom teeth. I don’t even have any trouble brushing them. Sometimes it pays to have a big mouth.
*envy*
My wisdom teeth tried to kill me, so I had them out.
They hung on for dear life, took bone and arteries with them.
I also had an extra tooth or two.
I did have some extra lives, but they cause problems, so I had them removed as well.
You know, I have to wonder…
If we all have our wisdom teeth removed, then the people with wisdom teeth don’t die. Evolution is, therefore, not encouraged to get rid of the wisdom teeth.
So, will we never evolve past having them?
It can be a little more subtle than that too… it comes down to the fact that having surgery and indeed growing them in the first place has a cost versus the minimal benefits. They won’t go away quickly, but without any need they probably won’t hang around forever… or if they do it may be in a vestigal form.
Or we could just stop treating people with wisom tooth problems, that would speed it up somewhat…
i had like 6 teeth taken out this one time
i dont know what happened to all the space because i seem to have a normal enough set now
not that i spend time inspecting others’ mouths for normality
It may be that you had more than you needed. I had some removed for my braces when I was young and my extra wisdom teeth closed in the gaps. You can work it out… number of teeth you have left plus the number you’ve had removed…
Still, six at once? That can’t have been too much fun.
Only needs a small percentage of people with the “wisdom teeth gene” to die off in each generation for evolution to act on it. We’ve artificially lessened the disadvantage of the gene, but it’s still there.
You could make the same argument about human society in general – we no longer have any significant predators and it’s pretty hard to actually die through poor genetics (excepting certain disorders), so we might simply evolve in the direction of the people who have the most children, which isn’t necessarily the smartest, strongest and best of the species like we might hope.
Mike Judge’s Idiocracy.
Also I did a thing on my blog proposing that fertility drugs could indirectly cause the entire human race (through evolution) to be infertile. The logic was questionable but I think it was funny.
Heh.. I love that film.
Wouldn’t want the descendants of Cletus to be ruling the world though… I’d better get on with it and crank out a hundred or so children.
That’s interesting.
I can see your logic on that. I can’t see it leading to a majority of the population becoming infertile, but I can see it leading to a much larger proportion of the population in the future being so. If there is a genetic trait or abnormality (possibly a recessive one) that can make infertility more likely then that trait would by it’s nature be self limiting, causing some of its carriers to be unable to continue it.
Treating infertility through drugs would not stop the underlying problem if it was genetic, but mean that more people in the next generation would be likely to carry the trait and therefore cause a likely increase in individuals where it becomes dominant or where they are subject to the right environmental conditions that the problem emerges.
And think about it… surgery is risky, even if it’s just to remove the teeth. I had mine out a while back, and it was, quote, “the trickiest surgery,” unquote, the oral surgeon had ever done. And keep in mind this was an aging Vietnam vet that’d been in practice since the 70’s! Took nearly three hours, and they had to break each one into little tiny pieces to be taken out, one by one. Then after they X-rayed my jaw, to make sure he hadn’t broken it in the process!
So, having them out could increase the evolutionary effect: more people dying because of the surgery, even if the ones that the surgery works on live pain-free lives afterward.
other things i have and don’t need:
self pity, insecurity, doubts, my feet
keep getting bigger. lots of parts
left over, no idea why i even keep them.
maybe they’ll be useful one day.
i hear you. i must have so many invisible things i dont need…the excess weight doesnt just exist by itself!
i know! for all the mental crunches we do,
we should have washboard minds!
I love the coccyx.
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I had to have four teeth out when I was younger as I had a second set of Wisdom teeth coming through. I woke up in surgery just as the dental surgeon had removed the last one, about an hour before I was expected to wake up and as a result spent the rest of the day in a groggy stupor.