SCIENCE & THE BIBLE by Bolton Davidheiser, PhD ., Chairman of the Science Division, Biola College
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O n e of the evidences presented for evolution is that of vestigial organs. The argument is that the human body, as well as the bodies of various animals, contains a number of structures which are no longer of use but which were of value to distant ancestors. Wiedersheim, a German anatomist, compiled a list of more than 180 such parts in man, and the human body came to be thought of as a walking museum of antiquity. But as the knowledge of physiology in creased it was found that most of these organs have a useful function and many of them are vital. In the list of parts still considered vestigial by the writers of textbooks, the appendix is probably the most frequently cited example. The appen dix and associated cecum in man are most commonly compared with the corresponding parts of the rabbit. It is implied or plainly stated that a dis tant common ancestor of both rabbits and men used these structures for the storage of food. Descendants of this common ancestor which became rab bits continued to use food of such a nature that this organ had survival value, and hence rabbits today have a large pocket-like structure at the junc tion of the small and large intestines. But descendants of this common an cestor which became men adapted themselves to a different diet and no longer had a need for this organ. Hence it has become reduced in size to a vestige and its function has been lost. From the evolutionary viewpoint, a rabbit is indeed a very distant rela tive of man. One might expect to find in animals closer to man a series of organs graded in size, but this is not the case. The cecum is found rather generally in iqammals, but it is par ticularly large in marsupials like the kangaroo, in herbivorous animals, and in some rodents. The great apes have an appendix, but there is some differ ence of opinion expressed in the litera ture as to whether any of the monkeys have one. Dr. William Straus, who is a famous anatomist at the Johns Hop kins University, says that none of the primates has an appendix except man, the four anthropoid apes, and one lemur. Weichert states that a few
rodents have one. Civets, which are carnivorous animals, also have an appendix. We have already mentioned the rabbit, which is no longer classi fied as a rodent. This seems to com plete the list. There is no pattern in the distribution of this organ among the different sorts of animals such as one would expect to find if it had once been a prominent part of a large cecum and gradually became vestigial as evolving animals became diverse. The appendix is rich in lymphoid tissue and may protect the body against infection, especially in early years. Sir Arthur Kieth, the noted English anthropologist, said the ap pendix should not be called vestigial. He called attention to the fact that the fate of an appendix which cannot cope with the conditions to which it has been exposed is similar to the fate of other lymphoid structures which are not called vestigial. Professor Le Gros Clark of Oxford University pointed out that the appendix has an abundant blood supply which indi cates that it is a specialized organ rather than vestigial. Dr. Leon Jacob son of the University of Chicago found experimental evidence on which he based his belief that the appendix is an important blood-forming organ. Professor Alfred Romer of Harvard, an outstanding comparative anatomist and evolutionist, said, “ This is fre quently cited as a vestigial organ supposedly proving something or other about evolution. This is not the case ■ • •” Dr. Maurice Burton, a British scientist, also said that the appendix is not vestigial, though he believes it has been modified by evolution. Ap parently he does not lightly repudiate the vestigial organ concept for he believes that the habit of house cats to paw the ground when contented may formerly have had a useful pur pose and that it may possibly have been inherited from an ancestor com mon to cats and a distant marsupial relative or even from a still more distant reptilian ancestor. As a number of outstanding evo lutionists call for the removal of this classical example from the dwindling list of vestigial organs, the validity of the whole concept of allegedly vesti gial organs comes under suspicion.
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