• bearboiblake@pawb.social
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    9 hours ago

    Fun fact, we evolved to eat raw meat, that’s why we have an appendix. Then, when we stopped eating raw meat, we started to evolve away from the appendix.

    Evolutionary arguments don’t support the naturalist fallacy, because evolution doesn’t work like that. It responds to environmental pressures. It’s not some guiding light for what we’re “meant” to be doing, it’s the tools we’ve got to support what we already did.

    • Caffie@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      This article says it was for raw vegetables:

      For our ancestors, the appendix most likely evolved to help them digest a diet rich in raw vegetables and cellulose, as it still does in many herbivorous mammals. Thousands of years ago it would have functioned as an extension of the cecum, involved in the bacterial digestion of fibrous plant materials.

    • hector@lemmy.today
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      8 hours ago

      That is not proven though, the appendix part, that’s the explanation I like the best as well. Other explanations, I forget, the aliens had it for some shit we don’t even know about, oh yeah, the more likely non joke one, and it could be what you say and this both many organs do multiple things, is to provide a reservoir of gut bacteria, to repopulate the gut after the system is flushed. That would go right along with digesting raw meat, as using independent bacteria is large part of the human body we’ve come to learn.

      I forget what the other theories are, but there are others for the appendix, I believe the raw meat and reservoir of bacteria both though is most likely.

      • raid_dad@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        While still technically a theory, the appendix acting as a reservoir for healthy gut bacteria has largely been proven. That function could very well have helped with digestion of raw meat as well, especially if eating raw meats caused issues with diarrhea.

      • daggermoon@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        I want my money back
        That wasn’t fun
        The bricks and the gravel and the mud and the blood
        Another wild teenager in search of success, welcome to the jewel of the modified west

    • CovfefeKills@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      It’s probably got more to do with eating less rotten meat than eating less raw meat. It has functions for the immune system it is like the surveillance system for what is being introduced to the body.