THE HUMAN BODY

Bodies! We all have one, and we couldn’t live without them! But let’s be honest, they’re kind of unreliable. If you’re like me, a millennial hitting the ripe age of “oh no, my back hurts,” you may have started to notice that the human body has quite a few design flaws. Sure, humans are incredible—just look at everything we’ve accomplished! But at the same time, our bodies are full of quirks, inefficiencies, and, let’s face it, downright baffling features.

Take our eyes, for example. The majority of us can’t see properly without glasses or contacts. In fact, about half of Americans and Europeans—and a whopping 70% of people in some Asian countries—rely on corrective lenses to get through the day. Before the invention of glasses, people who couldn’t see well were at a serious disadvantage, potentially facing starvation if they couldn’t hunt or gather. Even if your eyesight is perfect, your eyes still have a literal blind spot. This is because of how our retinas are built, with photoreceptor cells pointed backward. It’s an evolutionary glitch we share with all vertebrates, unlike the octopus, which has a much more efficient design. One point for team cephalopod.

But it’s not just our eyes that are oddly put together. Ever wonder why we’re so prone to sinus infections? That’s thanks to our sinuses’ terrible drainage system. The sinuses behind our cheeks drain upward, defying gravity, which leads to all sorts of fun when you catch a cold. Dogs, with their elongated snouts, don’t face this problem because their sinuses drain properly. Once again, evolution left us with the short end of the stick.

Speaking of sticking points, how about the fact that we can choke on our food so easily? This stems from the fact that we breathe and eat through the same tube, our throat. One wrong move, and suddenly you’re performing the Heimlich maneuver. Birds, on the other hand, can swallow whole fish and breathe without issue, thanks to a separate respiratory system. Lucky them.

Now let’s talk about something even more fundamental: walking upright. Sure, it allows us to run, dance, and do all sorts of athletic feats. But it also makes us prone to knee and ankle injuries, because we evolved from animals that walked on four legs, and our bipedal joints are, quite frankly, held together like an elementary school art project. The Achilles tendon, which bears the brunt of walking on two legs, is just sitting there on the back of our foot, exposed and vulnerable. One wrong move at the grocery store, and ouch—there goes your ability to walk.

But evolution’s meddling didn’t stop at our external parts. On the inside, we’re even more inefficient. Take vitamin C, for instance. Unlike most animals, humans can’t make their own, which is why we’re so reliant on fruits and veggies to get it. Without it, we’d succumb to scurvy, losing teeth and breaking down at the cellular level. Yet, our DNA still carries the broken genes that should be producing vitamin C. It’s like nature’s way of saying, “Whoops!”

Need more examples? Look at wisdom teeth, which often don’t fit in our mouths and need to be removed. Or consider how half of the human population has to deal with the complications of childbirth because the human head is so large and the pelvis is so narrow. These aren’t exactly what you’d call optimized designs.

So, who’s to blame for these questionable features? No one, really. The human body wasn’t designed; it evolved. Evolution is an ongoing process of tiny tweaks over millennia, not a deliberate design. We’re imperfect because we’re the result of countless adaptations over billions of years. Our backs hurt because we stand on two legs with a spine that was once horizontal. We choke because our ancestors didn’t evolve a separate breathing tube. We wear glasses because, well, evolution can’t flip our retinas around.

But here’s the thing: even with all our flaws, we’ve survived. Our bodies may be imperfect, but they’re good enough. They’ve carried us through a 4 billion-year journey of survival and adaptation. So, the next time your back aches or your sinuses act up, just remember: you’re not perfect, but you’re here, and that’s a pretty big deal. Our bodies, for all their quirks and blunders, are still incredible. Stay curious, embrace the imperfections, and keep surviving.