• @[email protected]
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        175 hours ago

        "Evidence of evolution

        The extreme detour of the recurrent laryngeal nerves, about 4.6 metres (15 ft) in the case of giraffes,[32]: 74–75  is cited as evidence of evolution, as opposed to intelligent design. The nerve’s route would have been direct in the fish-like ancestors of modern tetrapods, traveling from the brain, past the heart, to the gills (as it does in modern fish). Over the course of evolution, as the neck extended and the heart became lower in the body, the laryngeal nerve remained in its original course."

        I think this is what he was getting at

  • @[email protected]
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    299 hours ago

    The teeth thing is just because of our high sugar, high grain diet

    The first* people with bad dental health were Egyptians as they lived on bread (which packs your teeth and feeds the bacteria that ferment it and make acid) before that, and until the invention spread, people died of old age with all their teeth intact

    I eat very low carb - almost entirely meat due to allergies, and haven’t had a cavity since I started doing that, despite me nearly never brushing or flossing my teeth

    *There were also people who lived in the tropics and ate a lot of fruit, and those with sugar cane.

    • Tlaloc_Temporal
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      53 hours ago

      I thought Egyptians had bad teeth because their flour was ground with sandstone, leaving sand in their bread. They ground their teeth into nothing by eating sand.

      • @[email protected]
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        105 hours ago

        Those low life expectancies are typically due to high infant deaths. Once you are like 10 or so, the life expectancy is much higher, and more informative. The life expectancy at birth is in many cases a bit misleading.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 hour ago

          That’s fair. It was just my understanding that one of the leading causes to death was that the teeth started to rot away. I clearly need to brush up on my human history a bit!

    • db0
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      48 hours ago

      Similar. I don’t eat low carbs, just almost no bread, and my teeth never get cavities

      • @[email protected]
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        95 hours ago

        Yeah but that can also be because of genetics. I eat bread everyday and still never had a cavity

        • @[email protected]
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          56 hours ago

          Birds originally did have teeth. Beaks are thought to have replaced teeth because they serve the same purpose but are much lighter, and more importantly because they develop faster than teeth. Birds considerably predate grasses (which are what grains are).

  • @[email protected]
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    10 hours ago

    THE APPENDIX HAS ENTERED THE CHAT.

    Being able to make our own Vitamin C aside, the fact that a vestigial organ can randomly decide to fucking kill you is asinine from a design perspective. Its the equivalent to building a pool in the sims and removing the ladder for the first person who wanders inside.

  • @[email protected]
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    39 hours ago

    I feel like feet and ankles have a lot of responsibility. I had a really bad case of plantar fasciitis for like 2 years and it sucked. Every step you take was a stabbing pain

    • @[email protected]
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      59 hours ago

      That’s really just a modern problem. If you were part of a tribe walking out of Africa, you’d never have that problem. Our feet are pretty impressive actually

  • atocci
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    19 hours ago

    Wait what’s the deal with the horses? I want to feel good about myself today.

    Edit: Wow, those bastards have it rough.

    • @[email protected]
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      17320 hours ago

      Their genetics have sacrificed nearly every aspect of basic resiliency for maximum speed on the plains. Most of the work caring for horses is keeping them from accidentally killing themselves. Full disclosure: I worked as a stable hand as a child in exchange for riding lessons. Will never ever own a horse.

    • @[email protected]
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      8620 hours ago

      Sometimes they will die because they can’t puke. Also broken legs are usually fatal even with vet care.

      • LennethAegis
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        10420 hours ago

        To add on why broken legs are fatal: its because horses are so big, that even with a sling, they cannot support themselves well on 3 legs. And lying down is also not an option as their own weight will crush their internal organs if they stay down for too long.

        • @[email protected]
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          119 hours ago

          Also their blood gets pumped through their hooves, and to much weight on one hoof can impede blood flow through their body.

        • @[email protected]
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          5118 hours ago

          Oh, wow, I had always thought that shooting a horse with a broken leg was an act of brutal expedience, not mercy.

        • @[email protected]
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          2518 hours ago

          Also, don’t they need to run to move food through their digestive tract? Or to force themselves to cough if they have something stuck in their lungs? I think there is some sort of dependency of basic functions that relies on the movement of their lungs/stomach going back and forth while running that they can’t easily do if they just stand in one place all day

        • lad
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          23 hours ago

          “So, Timmy, do you want to be healthy as a horse?”

      • @[email protected]
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        1312 hours ago

        Humans have multiple toes because our ape ancestors used their toes like fingers. Having multiple, separate toes is probably bad for survival unless you’re using toes to manipulate tools.

        Animals that have distinct toes include apes, geckos, mice, raccoons and similar animals which need them to grip onto surfaces or to manipulate things. There are predators which have separate toes because they’re a place to mount claws: eagles, cats, etc. There are animals that have separate toes with webbing between for swimming. But, for a lot of animals, separate toes aren’t really useful, so they’ve evolved away: elephants, rhinos, giraffes, horses, cows, etc.

        • @[email protected]
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          1112 hours ago

          I mean, humans run around on something that birds would consider knees, and stupidly try to support their entire body weight using only half their legs.

    • @[email protected]
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      613 hours ago

      Actually a bigger contributor is underdeveloped jaws due to no longer requiring to chew from.a very young age for nutritional requirements.

    • DarkGamer
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      7620 hours ago

      From an evolutionary standpoint we just have to survive long enough to reproduce, if we can’t eat past age of reproduction there’s no evolutionary pressure to change that.

      Thank goodness for modern dentistry.

      • @[email protected]
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        20 hours ago

        That’s completely untrue.

        Evolution applies to the entire lifespan — if we could “reproduce” but died in childbirth every time, our species would have gone extinct long ago.

        Parents and grandparents also contribute greatly to the success of a child long long after they’re born, helping to ensure it also survives to reproductive age.

        • @[email protected]
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          1119 hours ago

          “grandparents”

          Life expectancy in 18th century France was in the 20s, grandparents are optional

          • @[email protected]
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            5819 hours ago

            I don’t disagree with your overall point, but statistics like that are almost always heavily skewed because of high infant mortality rates

            • snooggums
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              2319 hours ago

              The mortality rate during childbirth was pretty high for women on top of the infant rate. Childbirth as a whole dragged the numbers down.

              • @[email protected]
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                59 hours ago

                The mortality of mothers only became a big issue between doctors being in charge of birth and hand washing becoming a rule

                • @[email protected]
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                  46 hours ago

                  The domestication of storks has also led to fewer deaths upon delivery. I wish to also add something to this thread of reddit factoids.

          • @[email protected]
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            19 hours ago

            [Edit : It turns out people have said the same thing while I was looking for the right source to confirm my point, so I guess this comment’s a bit redundant now. Still leaving it in case someone’s interested]

            The number’s correct but…

            Child mortality The most significant difference between historical mortality rates and modern figures is that child and infant mortality was so high in pre-industrial times; before the introduction of vaccination, water treatment, and other medical knowledge or technologies, women would have around seven children throughout their lifetime, but around half of these would not make it to adulthood. Accurate, historical figures for infant mortality are difficult to ascertain, as it was so prevalent, it took place in the home, and was rarely recorded in censuses; however, figures from this source suggest that the rate was around 300 deaths per 1,000 live births in some years, meaning that almost one in three infants did not make it to their first birthday in certain periods. For those who survived to adolescence, they could expect to live into their forties or fifties on average.

            So reaching 50 wasn’t too rare for someone who had survived childhood, and given how people often started having children younger then, that was well enough to be grandparent. Doesn’t mean everyone would’ve gotten to known their grandparents, but it wouldn’t have been super rare either.

          • @RedditRefugee69
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            1419 hours ago

            A reminder that life expectancy in ancient history was so low not because people generally croaked by 40, but because of how many children died young.

            It’s an average, not a maximum. People regularly lived into their 70s and 80s hundreds of years ago.

      • @[email protected]
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        20 hours ago

        Generally sure. We’ve certainly evolved to want to be around for a while after reproduction though, for example human infants are completely worthless. That doesn’t mean we need to be top notch, but we do need to exist sufficiently to get children to even the most brutal, basic independence.

        Compare that to something that hatches then is already just adulting, like many reptiles.

        I think the keyword is precocial vs altricial

    • @[email protected]
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      2420 hours ago

      They just didn’t evolve to consume so much sugar.

      Bro, eating oranges puts our tooth enamel in a weakened state. If we were designed, it was by an idiot.

        • @[email protected]
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          1719 hours ago

          It’s not the sugar, but the acid that our teeth can’t handle.

          The fact that healthy foods can’t be consumed without a risk of harm is not an intelligent design.

          I mean, even apples (i.e. “Garden of Eden”) can promote the growth of plaque!

          • @[email protected]
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            9 hours ago

            Cane and Abel tells us the gods don’t like vegetable farmers, that want meat

            Meat doesn’t damage your teeth

            Incidentally the damage from sugar is fermentation - it makes carbonic acid (the stuff that makes soda fizzy) which is a weaker acid than citric

            Citrus didn’t make it to Europe quickly - it came from China

            • flicker
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              918 hours ago

              If an all-knowing creator didn’t want humans to eat fruit from a specific tree, he shouldn’t have grown that tree in the only garden he had humans in.

                • flicker
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                  19 hours ago

                  Oh, right. The obedience only matters if you have to make yourself do it. It doesn’t count if it’s natural and painless and costs you nothing. Can’t believe I forgot about that?

          • @[email protected]
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            17 hours ago

            Oranges don’t exist naturally, was the point I was making. Theyre a hybrid, derived at least partly from pomelo.

            • Fushuan [he/him]
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              517 hours ago

              You are right, it’s just that in Spanish a “pomelo” is a grapefruit, and I was unaware of the whole rabbit hole that is the hybridwtion of the pomelo, mandarin, citrus and all that. I deleted my old comment because I was just confused.

              • @[email protected]
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                217 hours ago

                No worries, I don’t know all the details and looking more deeply, it looks to be more complicated than I was remembering too.

    • @[email protected]
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      320 hours ago

      Half our expected lifetime was our expected lifetime back when they evolved. Teeth are doing quite well, all things considered.

  • @[email protected]
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    3621 hours ago

    Its only a valve. Topologically speaking, the passage from the mouth to the anus only constitutes one hole.

    The passage of air into the lungs is not a hole however, that is a cavity. Same difference with the vagina, that’s not a hole, that’s a cavity.

        • @[email protected]
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          1617 hours ago

          7, if the cut-off is 60 microns (tear ducts). Smaller than that, we’re essentially Swiss cheese.

          • @[email protected]
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            816 hours ago

            Tbh, I was kinda hoping for someone with better biology knowledge than me to correct me. Thanks.

            • @[email protected]
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              10 hours ago

              Important note, if you take a straw that separates into two split straws (kinda in a “Y” shape) that from a topological point of view is two holes, because one is for one of these paths, and the other is an extruded hole on the side of the first path. In topology you can’t break or mend material, but you can pull, stretch, squeeze and move it all you want. So you can move one of the split straw “legs” to the bottom of the whole straw, getting a shape similar to a “V”, it would look pretty much like a pair of pants. And topologically speaking it would be exactly the same. So… One straight hole for your mouth all the way down to your anus. Another two are there for your nostrils, that’s 3 already. The rest are for your tear ducts, which have two holes on the edge of your eye, (so four in total) which merge and then connect to your nose.

              So a human, from a topological perspective, is just a seven holed doughnut. Also Vsauce made a great video about that, with pretty great animations.

        • @[email protected]
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          19 hours ago

          I am well aware that people have three topological holes. Matter of fact, I proved that years ago.

          In this case, I only referred to one topological hole, from mouth to anus.

          I never mentioned the nose, nor was that part of the topic in question.

          • @[email protected]
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            618 hours ago

            Nose is two. Your butt isn’t one. Or rather, your mouth and nostrils would be the entrance and your butt is the combined exit of those three holes. If you don’t count the nostrils, you only have one hole. A hole always goes through something, otherwise it’s just a cavity. And also, holes only count from one side. Your butt and mouth are the same hole, just from different ends.

            • @[email protected]
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              317 hours ago

              Nose is only one hole, topologically speaking. You can run a string from one nostril to the other.

              One topological hole.

            • @[email protected]
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              217 hours ago

              Nose is only one hole homie, runs from one nostril to the other. It takes the mouth to add a secondary orifilce. And it takes the anus to add a third orifice.

              Topology for ya.

              • @[email protected]
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                316 hours ago

                Doesn’t matter which way you turn it, the result is the same. As you count it, your first hole is nostril to nostril. I count mouth to anus as hole one and then add the left and right nostrils as secondary and tertiary orifices. Having a nose ads two holes to the total count. If you had no nose, you‘d have one hole, if you only had a nose, you’d also only have one hole.

            • Match!!
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              218 hours ago

              oh! but then why is it three holes and not nostril-to-mouth as a hole and other-nostril-to-butt as another hole, or some other combination

              • @[email protected]
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                17 hours ago

                Quick illustration:

                Nostrils:
                ___________
                _________  |
                _________| |
                _________  |
                Mouth:   | |
                \________| |
                 ________  |
                /        | |
                         | |
                         | |
                         | |
                         | | 
                         | |
                Butthole:
                

                That is 3 holes in total because you can “connect” any opening with 3 different one’s.

    • @[email protected]
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      212 hours ago

      Depends on the state of your esophagus, doesn’t it? If it’s closed (which it mostly is) then your mouth and nose holes go to your lung cavity. Your anus is also part of a cavity that goes through your intestines all the way up your throat and stops at your esophagus.

    • @[email protected]
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      120 hours ago

      No, the vagina is topologically a hole, as the uterus with the Fallopian tubes has two direct openings into the abdominal cavity (another objectionable “design” choice).

        • @[email protected]
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          518 hours ago

          I feel like if that happened with a human it would be a pretty minor thing to go up in there and smash the egg so you just shit out the shell and stuff. I don’t really see a reason it would have to be fatal, or even really all that big of a deal, if that’s just what human reproduction looks like.

          Now if we were using the cloaca in the same way we presently use the vagina, as a birth canal for developed offspring, that would be a different story, but ultimately not all that different from now.

  • @[email protected]
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    18 hours ago

    the lack of a solid abstract and title that ignores the last names of many of the people involved leads me to believe this is a satire