Dual opposable thumbs, now we can grab and open the water bottle with one hand!
Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
I'd like to make bodily functions a bit less gross.
I think they are fairly well-designed. You have to be able to expel solids and liquids somehow, otherwise they'd build up inside you, and you might die if they couldn't be digested or sweated out. I guess they could be combined, like birds. But I don't think that would make it less 'gross' in a non-quantifiable way. Sweating is also a pretty effective way of cooling down. Other methods such as large ears as radiators, thin blood vessels on the forearms that must be licked to aid in heat transfer, and panting all have their downsides.
If you think about it, tailpipes on cars and vapor pipes on AC and heatpumps and furnaces are basically the same thing as our digestive system.
The only thing that could really be redesigned is to have them be much more efficient, like some animals, which can pull a lot more water and nutrients out of byproducts. That, and the ability to extract stuff like heavy metals, microplastics, and forever chemicals, which get stuck and can't always leave.
Waste does not have to leave residue behind and stink. We ought to be able to extract more nutrients from digestion, and we could probably make an implant to carbonize waste, compress it into pellets, and even wrap it in a biodegradable capsule before disposal. I do like your point of dealing with hazardous materials.
If the body couls generate muscle without needing to excersize first that'd be cool. But I guess that's why steroids were invented and those have some side effects