Vorkosigan

Sure, but if we had those powers of smell, wouldn't our brains have to be reorganized to accomodate them? I mean, strikes me there is a good reason -- finite brain space given to more urgently needed stuff. Or is it just a bummer mutation?

Vorkosigan

lpetrich

Or else because smell is no longer as useful if one's nostrils are high above the ground. This may explain why many species of birds have a poor sense of smell -- they spend so much time flying that a sense of smell is not much use for them, though some species are known to use that sense as they fly.

[ May 20, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

To elaborate a point ref the spine, it’s rather odd to run something as important as the main nerve the brain uses to communicate with the rest of the body through a bony assemblage. No other nerves need ‘protection’ with bones; breaking the spine also frequently damages the nerve, with pretty drastic consequences. Breaking a leg doesn’t paralyse it; breaking your back makes you a sitting hominid for the friendly neighbourhood leopard. Permanently. As support for the body, the vertebral column doesn’t need to contain nerves (otherwise, shouldn’t nerves pass through the femur and humerus too?). Nope, a sensible designer would simply run the main cabling through the body separately.

If one assumes a designer with a clean slate for each design, there’s also a bunch of problems with our feet. Toes are in line for constant damage. Who has not smacked a bare toe on some furniture in our safe, carpeted homes, let alone what they’d be subjected to in the Great Outdoors! Bony heels send shockwaves up the spine with each step (elephants, for instance, have thickly cushioned heels). Why bother with toenails to defend a small bit of the upper surface? How often have those been ripped out on rough ground? Surely such a material should be more widely used, especially on the soles? IOW, did god cut corners on our foot design, safe in the knowledge that we’d invent shoes?

And on a slightly different but related topic: puny miracles like gold fillings in teeth. Sure, a deity could turn amalgam to gold. But why would this being not just turn the amalgam into fresh new enamel? Or, with a little foresight, for those he deems worthy of this attention, why not banish the oral bacteria that cause the cavities?

It’s Nicholas Humphrey’s Argument from Unwarranted Design again. The proposed explanation has ‘too much design of the wrong kind’: excessively complicated at times, unexpectedly limited at others. A coccyx doesn’t have to be made of separate small vertebra-shaped bones, but is; herbivores should be able to digest cellulose, but cannot.

Cheers, Oolon

gallo

Whales have small vestages of the muscles that were once used to move the external ears (pinnae). A few species retain small pinnae even though they can serve no function but to create drag and turbulance. The ear cannal in all whales is closed. But as embryos, whales develop and then reabsorb buds for pinnae as well as limb buds for rear limbs.

Deimos

Come on you guys! You know why these things are as they are.... THE FALL.

All things were designed perfectly in The Beginning, but when The Creation was cursed all became imperfect as part of the punishment.

There is nothing that cannot be explained by THE FALL.

Boro Nut

You forgot ginger pubic hair Oolon. That's top of the list surely. I mean, why would god make you want to spew during oral sex?

Boro Nut

Synaesthesia

But Oolon, it's not a bug, it's a feature. You see, all these design errors were created with the appearance of age when that devilish eve tricked poor Adam into eating of the tree of knowledge.

scigirl

Yeah and the LANDING is a bitch too!

Oolon - I am very impressed, and I plan on stealing many of these, just be warned (I'll give you due credit though).

scigirl

Bubba

Excellent Oolon...Thanks!!! By the way, thanks also to Scigirl for her evolution update a few days ago...

Bubba

Duvenoy

Oolon, that is one terrific list! May I add a morsel to it?

Thanks, I will: A serpent's hearing system has got to be among the sillist of the Sacred Blunders.

What's that, you say? Snakes have no ears and are deaf as Aunt Martha's wooden leg!

Ah, say not so.......

Snakes are quite sensitive to low frequency vibrations in the ground and airborn as well. Ground vibrations are picked up through the lower jaw and skull, and sent as electrical signels to the brain. Air-born vibes are caught by the lung and transmitted the same way. Is this the long way around the silo, or what?

But at least it shoots down the nonsense that a rattler's rattles being used as a mating signal. Tha rattle is too high a frequency for a snake to 'hear', not even it's own.

d