Why do humans have a third eyelid? - Dorsa Amin
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You know that little pink thing nestled in the corner of your eye? It’s actually the remnant of a third eyelid. In humans, it’s vestigial, meaning it no longer serves its original purpose. There are several other vestigial structures in the human body, quietly riding along from one of our ancestor species to the next. But why have they stuck around for so long? Dorsa Amir investigates.
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Meet The Creators
- Educator Dorsa Amir
- Director Avi Ofer
- Narrator Addison Anderson
- Animator Avi Ofer
- Illustrator Avi Ofer
- Director of Production Gerta Xhelo
- Editorial Producer Alex Rosenthal
- Associate Producer Bethany Cutmore-Scott
- Associate Editorial Producer Elizabeth Cox
- Script Editor Emma Bryce

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Vestigial structures give us a glimpse into our ancestral past. But what about our future? What features of our bodies do you think are being actively selected for or against now?
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Harry Connerty
Lesson completed
The features of our bodies I do think are being actively selected for are eyes because they are a glimpse into our ancestral past.
sarmy vaddi
Lesson completed
A feature in our body that is vestigial for us now is the wisdom teeth. Since we don't have as powerful jaws as we used to, we don't need powerful teeth anymore.
s g
Lesson in progress
I think that far in the future, our bodies can adapt to what happens in the environment like if the whole world floods and because there's not going to be enough land and boats, we will need to adapt to the water. Maybe in the far future, because our technology in the world has become very advanced, people don't need to move around so maybe our legs either shrink or become like tails. All the humans on Earth can evolve and change as we have already and like how because we don't need our wisdom teeth our bodies decided that we don't need it anymore. Just like our third eyelid, because we didn't use it our bodies adapted to not you said anymore. Freestyle one thing we all know for sure is that humans can adapt and change but nobody knows how.
Ana Fajardo
Lesson in progress
I believe that there are different things that will disappear over time and others may evolve in the human body. Such as wisdom teeth, fewer and fewer people have or in many cases are smaller. On the other hand, there are humans who undergo different surgeries and things that affect future generations biologically and can be transformed.
Epi Sete
Lesson completed
Well we cannot predict the future on different subjects of things. As for the features, the whole body can be actively selected for and against today.
Tse Yat Hang
Lesson completed
the whole body evoluted, maybe thinner, just like the 22th century of Doraemon episode
Ben Banfalvi
Lesson completed
Our future could hold a lot. Our bodies can mutate in many different ways. Humans tend to evolve in a good way, our bodies mutate because our lifestyle changes.(like when our spines straightened) the reason why we got rid of the third eyelid is because we didn't use it anymore. (possibly because our ancestors started finding shelters, like caves) our bodies are trying to tinker with themselves, they take what is not needed and add, whats required. Natural selection filters out the odd mutations that are possibly harmful but keeps the good ones. If a genetic variant influences survival, its frequency should change with the age of the surviving individuals.
Vikas Jaiswal
Lesson in progress
Well according to me vestigial organs do not give any information about past but we may be able to predict furthur changes. I'm not sure for this but it might be possible that furthur generations would have high melanin levels. Also it is possible that complex brain with more number of neurons can be observed in future generations. In short natural selection will promote organisms with higher level of complexities.