Called ‘’vestigial’’ organs, these useless body parts are leftovers from our evolutionary ancestors, who actually needed them. Take your wisdom teeth, for example. Today they crowd our mouth and often needed to get yanked by the dentist, but our primate ancestors had larger jaws and needed the extra choppers in case some rotted away in the days before tartar-control toothpaste. Our tailbone – or coccyx – is a leftover from animals that needed tails for balance or grasping trees branches. The gallbladder is a pouch that holds bile (made by the liver) and slowly releases it into the digestive tract. It also makes painful stones and can cause problems from cancer (which spreads to necessary organs) and inflammation. Most people that have to have it removed don’t notice much of a difference.
Paranasal sinuses are what most of us traditionally think of as our sinuses. As the name might suggest, they’re the four that surround our nose, and generally feel cruddy during allergy season and get infected and stuff. Yeah, we don’t need those. It’s theorized that our ancestors had extra smell receptors there, which would’ve been helpful in a hunter/gatherer society. Not so much in a society that has progressed enough to invent axe body spray.
Picture Credit : Google
