There was a thought for generations that the appendix had no purpose in the human body, but this thought is now changed. Scientists discovered the purpose of this organ and it is amazing.
This, on the first look useless, the organ has actually a nice purpose in our body. It serves as a home for good bacteria and it is a useful thing for the body to “reboot” the digestive system if it suffers from cholera or dysentery.
People first thought that this organ didn’t have any purpose, that it was simply a leftover of an evolutionary process. For years, doctors removed the appendix from patients’ bodies, but that was wrong. Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina researchers tells that appendix can save us from cholera or dysentery.
Professor Bill Parker thinks that doesn’t mean we should keep our appendix no matter what happens.
“It’s very important for people to understand that if their appendix gets inflamed, just because it has a function, it does not mean they should try to keep it in,” he explained.
“So it’s sort of a fun thing that we’ve found, but we don’t want it to cause any harm, we don’t want people to say, ‘oh, my appendix has a function’, so I’m not going to go to the doctor, I’m going to try to hang onto it.”
He claims that bacteria in the appendix are a normal thing, and we have them in the digestive system and that special bacteria are lost due to evolution. That can be seen in koala’s appendix which is very long, much longer than human’s. It helps with their diet that is just made out eucalyptus leaves.
Even though, according to professor Vardix, our appendix acts in similar ways of koalas, that doesn’t mean they are the same.
Koalas are only eating eucalyptus and because of that, their appendix has a function. If in some strange way they start eating other food too, their appendix to would shrink. When it comes to our appendix, the shrinkage happened over many thousands of years.
