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The anus is an evolutionary marvel
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- montenegrohugo 5y agoTalk about an HN title.
- mLuby 5y agoIndeed. Not even a week since the last one: Rectal Breathing with Perfluorocarbons (cell.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27159001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27159001
- DonHopkins 5y agoNine days since: The Anus: Judge skeptical that Holmes’ luxury lifestyle should go before jury https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27114118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27114118
- dang 5y agoThe second 'orifice' title in 24 hours, too. The previous thread ended up keeping itself together. Not sure about this one yet.
- lliamander 5y agoSeems like people are keeping things relatively light-hearted with some intellectually interesting side topics.
- ekianjo 5y agoSoon we will need a NSFW filter when browsing HN
- echelon 5y agoThere's literally nothing NSFW with this. It's an evolutionary biology and anatomical article using words in a non-sexual manner. If your workplace would fire you for the title, you should strongly consider finding a new workplace.
- imoverclocked 5y agoNew title suggestions: "Butts: finding the source." or: "Scientists Find That Hindsight is not 20/20"
- JKCalhoun 5y agoURL contains: 'evolution-butts'
- laylomo2 5y agoFun fact: Latin had long vowels as well as long consonants. So be careful with them or else you might be calling an old woman an anus. ānus = ring / anus annus = year anus = old woman
- samatman 5y agoFollow-on fun fact: Spanish turned this particular long-consonant distinction into a different consonant, the eñe. Ano means anus, while año means year. One of the first sentences a student of Spanish will learn is "¿cuántos años tienes?", how old are you, literally "how many years do you have?"— often before they really grasp the distinction between ene and eñe.
- laylomo2 5y agoAlso, the Spanish word "anillo" (ring) is derived from a diminutive form of Latin "ānus".
- renewiltord 5y agoAnnular structures are ring shaped in English. Presumably through a similar path?
- azernik 5y agoYup, exact same thing - annulus being the Latin diminutive
- legerdemain 5y agoSimilar process with "homunculus" (little man) and "calculus" (little rock) and "nucleus" (little nut).
- thaumasiotes 5y agoHuh. "Nucleus" is a form that looks like an adjective to me; I'd expect "nucula" for the diminutive of "nux". And indeed I see this on etymonline: > from Latin nucleus "kernel," from nucula "little nut," diminutive of nux (genitive nucis) "nut," So for whatever reason a new word was called for, and our nucleus comes from that, not from the diminutive form of "nut".
- mikesabbagh 5y agomy only problem is with hemorroids, what went wrong in the design there!!
- adventured 5y agoAnother case of humans going against their evolutionary model.
- ekianjo 5y agoOh and where is the evolutionary model supposed to lead us then?
- pshc 5y agoWe're supposed to squat, not sit, when eliminating.
- azernik 5y agoAnd have a different diet, probably
- slver 5y agoNice thing about evolution is that if everyone keeps eating plastic for a few centuries, eventually we'll evolve to digest it properly. Of course most will die at first. But that's a price evolution is always willing to pay.
- ByThyGrace 5y agoWill we evolve, or will our gut bacteria evolve first? Regardless, I am now picturing a future where evolved humans find the smell of plastic appetizing.
- astrange 5y agoAlso a good way to solve gun violence, if you're very patient.
- haram_masala 5y agoNot to be snarky, but isn’t every part of a successful organism an evolutionary marvel? If not, then perhaps a more interesting tale would be to look at the bodily systems that are substandard garbage. I’d probably start with the lower back.
- nuclearnice1 5y agoThe back is a good one. How about this design where you stuff food in the same hole you breathe through? Seems so unnecessarily dangerous.
- btgeekboy 5y ago> Seems so unnecessarily dangerous. I agree, but it hasn't killed enough to evolutionarily matter.
- diamond_hands 5y agoIt has for fish!
- smegger001 5y agoIts worse for Squid their brain is a torus shape with its esophagus running through the middle. their brain cannot stretch but their esophagus can making it so that if a squid were to swallow to large of a bite it can rip their brain.
- ekianjo 5y ago> Seems so unnecessarily dangerous. It's not like there's no mitigation in place in the body itself.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoSure, but that's another hack. Evolution's solution: cough it out Better solution: don't send food, water, and air down the same pipe in the first place I mean, no competent engineer would design the plumbing for a building such that the same pipes were used for water and air at different times, right?
- martin1975 5y agoMy wife agrees with this statement, often
- trhway 5y agothe article talks about how anus may have formed, yet they don't mention embryonic development which usually kind of replays some evolutionary development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryological_origins_of_the_mouth_and_anus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryological_origins_of_the_m...
- wrnr 5y agoYea, we learned that in highschool as well, too bad not everyone frequented this forum was afforded the privilege of going to a poorly funded public school in the inner city. Indeed facts about anuses where surprisingly easy to come by.
- quercusa 5y agoIt turns out that evolutionary recapitulation has, at best, been oversold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel#Embryology_and_recapitulation_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel#Embryology_and_r...
- trhway 5y agothis is why i used "some". The full recapitulation theory is obviously not true. The embryo development is an algorithm which gets branched and pruned in parallel with evolution and without deep rewrite, and thus it contains very recognizable major phases of evolutionary path to the given point that embryo belongs to.
- easytiger 5y ago> replays some evolutionary development: Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny was somewhat debunked even 150 years ago. I speak as someone who owns a dozen Ernst Haeckel first or early editions. Is there some related underlying concept we can't put our finger on? Maybe. Just like Dunbar's number
- trhway 5y agoHaeckel is "development of advanced species passes through stages represented by adult organisms of more primitive species" which obviously isn't true in general. Our embryo though passes through the stages which were inherited from the embryos of our more primitive ancestors - the "embryo tree" structurally parallels and mirrors the evolution tree.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- asimjalis 5y agoThe title is pure clickbutt.
- AceJohnny2 5y agoMy university CS department worked with a nearby hospital, and student projects were often related to medical imaging or modeling topics. For a few years, there was work related to the anus, which according to the staff was an under-studied topic for obvious reasons. I'm afraid I chickened out of choosing the "model the anal sphincter" project. In retrospect it sounded fun and interesting.
- ervine 5y ago"In hindsight it sounded fun and interesting."
- sodapopcan 5y ago"hindsight"
- sodapopcan 5y agoEr, to clarify, I just meant like, "be-hindsight". Wasn't trying to be sarcastic, just following up on the joke by the parent commenter :)
- sodapopcan 5y agoThe stuff about evolving the digestive tract to get more out of food is super interesting and never thought about it. The whole thing about human buttocks as well I recently learned about after getting a dog of my own (ya ya, covid puppy acquirer here). I was always weirded out by my childhood dog's butt and read up on it while I was researching dog ownership before I got my current little buddy. I figured I was going to have to wipe his butt to ease my slight-yet-ever-present faecal phobia. I then learned that dogs (and most mammals) actually prolapse pretty extremely when pooping, making it so that poop rarely touches their butts (at least on short haired dogs). As it turns out, my pup's butt is generally the least smelly part of him! Anyway, a bit of a ramble about a dog's butt that many probably already know, but(t) I found it fascinating.
- 5y ago
- wrnr 5y agoI always thought that the human embryo develops it's anus first, and that this is a indication that is was also first in evolutionary development
- throwaway-87b 5y agoThere was an old website 'anus' - the american nihilist underground society, and the essayist that ran it claimed his work would be complete when the anus was recognized to be as holy as the mouth. Congratulations my man.
- nate_meurer 5y agoI'm just as fascinated by the valve at the base of the stomach, called the pyloric sphincteric cylinder. It uses an ingenious mechanism to selectively pass liquid and very small particles to the small intestine, while keeping larger chunks in the stomach for further digestion. It functions like a screen or filter, but with a simple, robust, and reliable structure. Here's a fantastic (and free) book about just this structure: http://med.plig.org/ http://med.plig.org/
- bbkane 5y agoThis book is not super friendly to a newcomer to the sphinctor. I was unable to finish the Introduction due to the unexplained technical jargon immediately presented.
- nate_meurer 5y agoIt does assume some background knowledge on the part of the reader, but that's a necessary feature of any advanced technical book or treatise. I'm not an expert in, well, anything, so I rely a lot on Wikipedia for the basics.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoA kindred spirit! You and i must be among a select group of individuals.
- kccqzy 5y agoTo me the most fascinating aspect is not filtering out large chunks, but that it prevents the highly acidic gastric fluid (the pH ranges from 1 to 3) in the stomach from reaching and damaging the small intestine. The stomach is equipped to deal with the extremely acidic fluid for digestion, but the small intestine is not.
- nate_meurer 5y agoNeutralization of acid is actually done in the duodenum. We have organs called Brunner's glands lining the top half of the duodenum that secret a special mix of alkaline bicarbonates and growth factors in a thick mucin carrier. This neutralizes the gastric acids and lines the small intestines with protective mucus. You're right though, the engineering that goes into our bodily machines is mind boggling.
- slver 5y agoReally. Like, not the cerebral cortex, the liver, or even the eye. Or how about pregnancy. Nope. Let’s be super impressed by a sphincter. It closes and opens.
- selestify 5y agoJust because some other organs are also evolutionary marvels doesn't mean the sphincter isn't one.
- slver 5y agoIt’s like going to a class of kids, narrowing down on the dumbest kid that’s consistently trouble and has a solid string of F-s and proclaiming “this child is a genius”. Maybe it is, compared to a cucumber, but your statement would still be awkward in comparison to the rest of the class. Pretty much everything that has evolved is intricate in ways we can’t even understand. When everything is a marvel equally, nothing is. But it’s not equal. Some things are more marvelous. So we call them a marvel. It’s how words work. Say, a green ball is also technically a red ball and blue ball. Nothing is perfectly green. But you still don’t call a brightly green ball a red ball. Because that’s how words work.
- selestify 5y agoTo say that the anus is not a marvel is to imply that it is a completely ordinary, expected development. The article explains why it's actually a fascinating piece of evolutionary work. Because that's how words work.
- slver 5y agoSo now being a "marvel" is a binary proposition. Either is something a marvel, or it's "completely ordinary, and expected". No, that's not how words work. Also, sphincters and valves have evolved countless ways independently in living organisms (and even in structures they build), and they're omnipresent also in the machines we create. Regulating flow in a pipeline (of any kind) is possibly one of the most basic adaptations you need in order to make a working system... of anything. So in fact... sphincters ARE completely ordinary and expected, if you ask me. And the anus is not special relative to other sphincters (and despite The Atlantic trying to be cute about it, they really don't support their headline in the article either).
- itwy 5y agoA CRM is surely less sophisticated than the marvellous, multifunctional sea cucumber anus. Could I possibly wake up one day with a custom one created and deployed to one of my servers, without my intervention?
- varyherb 5y agoWhen I think about the digestive tract, I wonder—is the human body topologically equivalent to a torus?
- oh_sigh 5y agoSpecifically a g-holed torus, since the digestive tract isn't the only hole through the human body. At the very least, the mouth and ear are connected forming another hole.
- dsamarin 5y agoIt depends on the minimum size of the what you will consider a hole. Check out the video from VSauce on YouTube about how many holes a human has. https://youtu.be/egEraZP9yXQ https://youtu.be/egEraZP9yXQ
- apengwin 5y ago"Oh, Professor, look! I think I've got an unexpected planet! Oooh, which one's that, Professor?" "It is Uranus, my dear," said Professor Trelawney, peering down at the chart. "Can I look at Uranus, too, Lavender?" said Ron.
- mattowen_uk 5y agoI grew up calling it 'Ur-in-us', now every seems to call it 'Ur-ay-nus'... hence the on-going childish joke. What's the correct pronunciation?
- gcapell 5y agoIf there was ever a time for the universal New Yorker caption: https://web.archive.org/web/20060203045552/http://modernarthur.com/blog/christwhatanasshole.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060203045552/http://modernarth... ...
- makeset 5y ago"Christ, what an evolutionary marvel!"
- max_hammer 5y agoAnus folding pattern are unique for every human being. So, they can be used as alternative to finger print.
- catblast01 5y agocf Smart Pipe https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ
- ectopod 5y agoIf your criminal activities leave anus prints you deserve to get caught.
- albrewer 5y agoSomeone just read your comment and got an idea for a startup.
- EForEndeavour 5y agoFree name idea: Ringerprint
- claar 5y agoI once spoke with a Christian opthamologist who described how many times her professors had to remind their students that the eye was a feat of evolution, lest they reach the conclusion that this impossible engineering achievement was by the hand of God. While this comment may draw unhelpful and undesired debate, I genuinely believe these amazing structures were created by the Word of the Almighty God and credit should be given where it is due. These are incredible designs by our omnipotent creator.
- cwhy 5y agoI am quite interested in the difference between people's intuition about things. The more complex a system is, the less I tend to think about it being designed.. It is just too beautiful to be a crafted artifact.
- ithkuil 5y agoNot sure what should be considered helpful or desired debate; such delicate a topic. Feel free to just say "stop" and I'll enquire no further. But since you're bringing this up, I'm tempted to ask: If credit should be given where credit is due, should we also be allowed to criticize where the design is not amazing?
- RedComet 5y agoCertainly. But the criticism your likely to present is trivial to answer from a theological perspective.
- ithkuil 5y agowhy do we need to wonder when things are well made if we're going to explain away anything that we don't judge favourably as "we poor mortals cannot grasp his greatness and thus cannot really that this is indeed an instance of bad design". Why would we mere mortals be capable of knowing good design when we see it in the first place?
- glenvdb 5y agoIt seems the point of theology is to make answering anything trivial. Whether those answers are useful or not is another matter.
- Thorentis 5y agoWhen I look at a brilliant, highly optimised piece of code, my first thought isn't "wow, I wonder how long and how many iterations of natural selection it look, to get this code snippet working just right". I do however, usually look at the Git blame.
- gadders 5y agoHalf of my comments start with "I heard a podcast the other day about this.." but I heard a podcast the other day that described how they had managed to get pigs to survive for multiple hours by inserting oxygenated liquid into their anus. "Takanori - One is a very intuitive approach we just intubated, from the anus, just to provide oxygen gas continuously. This oxygen delivery is really able to persist survival in lethal conditions. Even up to 60 minutes or even longer. Eva - 60 minutes of breathing through the rectum just by pumping in oxygen. Sounds amazing, but also like you could get a bit uncomfortable. The more clinically relevant approach uses a liquid that's very good at dissolving oxygen, perfluorocarbon or PFC. This liquid is already used by doctors during some ice surgeries and sometimes as a type of synthetic blood for transfusions. So we already know that it's safe for humans. Takanori - So that liquid ventilation approach is also having greater impacts on oxygenation. So as to really rescue those fatal hypoxic conditions in the mouse, rats, and pig model system. Eva - Incredibly, Takanori showed that when just less than a pint of this PFC was injected into the anus of pigs, they would stay happily oxygenated for up to 20 minutes when in respiratory failure. And they didn't stop there, by re-injecting every 20 minutes or so they could keep the pigs going for hours, or even more. Importantly though, when we breathe in and out using our lungs, we aren't just taking in oxygen. We're getting rid of carbon dioxide and other waste products too." Transcript of interview: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/intestinal-breathing-success-during-hypoxia https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/intes... NY Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/science/rectum-breathing-oxygen.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/science/rectum-breathing-... //EDIT//Actual paper: https://www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(21)00153-7?utm_source=EA https://www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(21)00153-7?utm_...
- glaberficken 5y agoJuvenile observation of the day: It's funny that this sits in the HN front page just above an article titled "Holes in the WiFi" :p
- antattack 5y agoThanks, now "you are an evolutionary marvel" sounds like an insult.
- therealasdf 5y agoIm convinced that who ever came up with this valve was inspired by anuses. Its a clever way to dispense honey without making a mess. Anus inspired honey dispenser https://imgur.com/a/jmQUSYr https://imgur.com/a/jmQUSYr
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago> Any live young who pass through the reproductive tract could also be imperiled by the proximity to poop-borne pathogens. Perhaps that’s why human anuses ventured off on their own. Clearly not, since it's not really feasible to give birth without simultaneously defecating all over the place. One of more unpalatable secrets kept from men back in the era where you were supposed to just sit in a different room and smoke your cigar.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 3GuardLineups 5y agohow...how do they manage that in the delivery room? They just throw away the bedding you're on after the delivery?
- javiermaestro 5y agoYup! paper covers / paper bedding, and the expert handling of midwives. Pretty simple and straight-forward! P.S. also enemas were used in the past... but fortunately, interventions such as this, or pubic hair shaving are no longer ordered for women during labor and birth!
- Traubenfuchs 5y agoTell that to my hemorrhoids that make me cry -and what‘s with making it pleasurable to stick stuff inside this dirtiest part of our body??? Evolution sucks.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bagacrap 5y agoget a bidet
- beckerdo 5y agoMy friend once registered the domain "myan" in the top level domain "us". All sorts of adolescent hilarity ensued. I see the domain is now available.
- samtuke 5y agoBrilliant writing from the Atlantic.