Humans are only walking digestive tracts
Humans are only walking digestive tracts. From an evolutionary perspective, all other organs originated from a primitive gut and have only one purpose: to serve it.
(credits to /u/[email protected] who phrased it so well in this post, even though i had the thought already years ago)
26 replies
Humans are meat donuts.
As a microbiologist, I've always said we're spaceships for bacteria. This is almost the same thing as your shower thought since our digestive system is critically dependent on the microbiome to function
not acknowledging the higher functions of humans as part of evolution and what we are is a tad psychopathic though no?
Yes, slightly more bacterial cells than human cells. I imagine some people are more alien microbe than others, though.
The microbiome changes daily based on the day's diet, so we're all quite unique from this perspective. It's also more than just bacteria as there's also fungi, archae, and even some bacteriophages (viruses that infect specific bacteria) present!
i mean... not really. if you can accept that humans are animals and animals, having evolved from a common ancestor, all share a common "x is just a walking y", that would have to be gonads. consider as a counter example, bugs that metamorphose into an adult form completely lacking intestines and even mouths. yet they retain their reproductive organs and die once they use them to reproduce. humans are just walking gonads with a bunch of supporting hardware attached.
ok how about this: the brain serves the muscles to perform more targeted movements, which serve the gut to collect food, which serves the gonads.
The gut exists to supply nutrients to the gonads. The muscles to feed the gut and handle the gonads output. The nervous system to control it all. Consciousness of it all, in all it's utterly pointless glory, purely because apparently there's a dark sense of humour somehow buried in universal statistics.
Alan Watts called us tubes with an input and output. Paraphrased but yes.
not reproductive tissue, and also nervous tissue. primitive animals only have ganglia, ganlions, or nerve nets as thier sole "Brain" reproductive come from something more basal, if you look at sponges.
if you want to go into protosomes and deuterosomes its gets wierder, and pseudoscoeolmates and acoelomates.
We fuck though.
This guy fucks
I mean, the digestive tracts gotta reproduce, u kno? You're just along for the ride, to guide yours to the next high compatibility digestive tract.
And really, the digestive tract is only there so the reproductive system can function.
Or... is the reproductive system there so the digestive system can replicate itself?
It's all there so the DNA can make more DNA, if you're serious about reducing humans to their most meaningless components.
Ugly bags of mostly water
Speak for yourself!
We're not walking digestive systems, we're walking and eating reproductive systems.
I'm not so sure about the claim all other organs originate from the gut. Reproductive organs aren't related to the digestive system. Broadly, life has one genetic goal, continue. If anything the digestive system exists in service of the reproductive system. Humans are a huge asterisk though. Since we're thinking meat we can opt out of the biological imperatives (survive, reproduce) entirely should we choose, so humans are more like a ghost driving a meat suit.
Elongated fleshy donut.
Structurally reinforced meat tubes.
I had a funny thought that we are surrounded by bacteria and have bacteria flowing through us, so we are like walking shells: the shell is mostly sterile thanks to white blood cells and antibodies, but inside the shell there's bacteria, and outside the shell (which is covered by a thin layer of dead shell) there's bacteria.
Weβre also walking circulatory systems for that matter.
All living things are energy conversion devices.
I got gas...trulated! In my blastopore!