Your hands, ears and teeth can highlight the body’s evolution

A fascinating new video has revealed the origins of our human condition, but also highlighted that each of us show different evolutionary traits.

Whilst most of us have a “palmaris longus” tendon connecting our hand and arm, around 15% of people do not. In fact, this tendon is now relatively defunct and is often used by doctors if needed for reconstructive surgeries today.

Equally, some people have the ability to “wiggle” their ears thanks to redundant muscles around our skull. The “auricularis” temporal bones allowed our ancestors to move their ears, as often seen in mammals today.

Meanwhile, some people have extra molars that need to be surgically removed because they no longer fit in the mouth. These molars would have helped our ancestors chew on tough, raw meat. Today, we’ve evolved past that point.

“The reason we still have fish and other species we evolved from, is that they can still exist within that ecological niche”, explained one YouTube user.

“If all the fish evolved into terrestrials there would be oceans void of life – that are still perfectly capable of sustaining it”.

Check out this video by researchers Joss Fong and Sarah Turbin below, for more quirky evolutionary traits! Which do you display? Do you find science and natural selection fascinating?

Did you find this video surprising? Which evolutionary traits do you still display? Were there any tendons or muscles that you are missing?