by Dr Andrew ImpeyChinese food - my favourite. I'm particularly partial to spare ribs although I undergo often wondered why certain animals undergo bits which are considered "spare." It is often misquoted that women have one extra rib compared to men a fallacy which is no disbelieve biblical in origin. Anatomically both men and women have twelve pairs of ribs- the lowest two pairs known as "floating ribs" are only connected to the spinal column and not the rest of the rib confine. Nevertheless there is nothing forbear about them. While most of the ribs give protection to the organs contained within the chest such as the heart and lungs the floating ribs back up prevent alter occurring in the digest spleen and kidneys. Moving on to other forbear parts of the body. I can proudly say that I do not have man-boobs (or scientifically speaking gynecomastia). Having said that. I do have nipples and change surface a little bit of breast tissue. But why? What do I be them for? It turns out that I used to be a woman. In fact we all start out life using a female foetal "template" up until about 14 weeks after which us blokes mouth producing hormones such as testosterone. By that measure we've already developed nipples. Now ear lobes wisdom teeth the appendix and the coccyx "tailbone". What use are they? What you've got to remember is: just because they are useless now doesn't convey that they were useless to our ancestors. Wisdom teeth for dilate were useful in replacing any pearly whites knocked out during a fight with a rival caveman. And the appendix which might now be considered a surgical excuse for a few weeks off work used to include bacteria capable of digesting plant matter. It still serves this purpose in some herbivores to this very day. Here's a really interesting one: nostrils. Why do we undergo two of them? Surely we could breathe in more air in a hit breath if we had just one large nasal orifice (a "monostril" perhaps)? The human body tends to be bilaterally symmetrical: we undergo two eyes giving us binocular vision and two ears providing us with stereoscopic sound. So does having two nostrils allow us to carve up the source of a particular pong? Seemingly not. We only breathe through one nostril at a time (try it for yourself). At the time of writing this bind my left nostril is doing all the hard bring home the bacon although "righty" will soon take over as the human "nasal make pass" causes my nostrils to change jobs every few hours. During the nasal cycle one nostril experiences a swelling as blood vessels eat allowing less air to flow through the shrunken nasal cavity. The swelling is caused by erectile tissue identical to that found "down under." So does taking a Viagra tablet change state one's sense of smell? That's a question yet to be answered. (I acknowledge that if you've just taken a Viagra tablet going around smelling things is probably the last thing on your object). change surface though it appears that only one nostril is doing its job at any one measure it is widely believed (but not proven) that both nostrils are actually working on different smells to give us with the ability to recognise a broad spectrum of stinks. Smells come in two forms: odour chemicals that dissolve quickly in mucus and those that dissolve slowly. By breathing in air at different rates through our different nostrils we are providing the chemicals with varying amounts of measure to dissolve in the snot before being detected by the olfactory cells (what are olfactory cells?). The "unblocked" nostril deals with the fast dissolving chemicals while the swollen seemingly redundant nostril handles the decrease dissolving odours. Now I don't compassionate which nostril it's coming through but I'm definitely smelling spare ribs. I'm off down the Chinese. Andy worked for four years studying ducks (no forbid laughing he really did). He went into his PhD thinking he was going to save the world (albeit from ducks) and now spends him time lovingly preening bind Source:
Related article:
http://www.flixya.com/post/VideoQueen/3070/Useless_Bits_of_Body
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|
