The Evolutionary Story

I recently read this article about vestigial structures.  These are things we still have in our bodies (muscles, ligaments, etc) that escaped the productiveness of evolution.  They no longer serve any purpose, but we still have them, leftover from times past.  Well, not everyone has them.  For example, I still have this weird monkey muscle in my forearm.  They were helpful in climbing and swinging from tree limbs.  As another example, I don't have extra dog ear muscles used for detecting where sounds come from, but people who can wiggle their ears do.  I thought it was quite interesting-- here's the article I read if you want to read more.  If you're really interested, type vestigial structures into google and it'll give you a lot more information.

(photo by e.hunt)