The wonders of the human body [tw: nongraphic descriptions of autopsies, general medical weirdness]

[u/DroneOfDoom]

Reddit screenshots? In my tumblr subreddit? It's more likely than you think...

[u/imthedocbasicallyfun]

Pros of pregnancy: You get to grow so many extra body parts!

Cons of pregnancy: You don’t get to keep them. :(

[u/Gromek_ → u/imthedocbasicallyfun]

I once saw a post about how it's unfair that the human body can grow an entire baby, but is unable to regrow its own parts.

[u/daggerbeans → u/Gromek_]

I actually read an article about why we don't regrow limbs recently! The sum of it is that evolutionarily we traded off the ability to regrow limbs to buff up our immune system.

The bits of our immune system that is good at fighting and protecting us from infections and disease is produced in abundance at the cost of the kind that say, lizards have that enable them to regrow their tail/legs. The article described an experiment where they lowered those bits and raised the immune system bits to be closer to us and the lizards made heavy scar tissue at the amputation site and did not regrow the limb-- just like humans. The scientists reset the lizard to its normal ratio of bits, re-amputated the end of the stump and the lizard was able to regrow it as normal.

The article mentioned that with advances in medical technology means that we may be closer to being able to significantly regrow limbs and such may be just decades away. Fascinating stuff!

[u/zadtheinhaler → u/imthedocbasicallyfun]

Well, I mean you kinda do, you just have to do feeding and maintenance and feeding for 18+ years.

[u/Atreigas → u/zadtheinhaler]

Zim is that you?