Appendix (anatomy) (nonfiction)

The appendix (or vermiform appendix; also cecal [or caecal] appendix; vermix; or vermiform process) is a finger-like, blind-ended tube connected to the cecum, from which it develops in the embryo. The cecum is a pouchlike structure of the colon, located at the junction of the small and the large intestines.

The term "vermiform" comes from Latin and means "worm-shaped."

The appendix has been called a vestigial organ, but that interpretation may be changing.

Useful organ

Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing writes:

The appendix has evolved in different animal species at least 29 times, according to this SciShow video, which means it probably serves a function. Scientists who studied appendixes in animals have come to the conclusion that it is a part of the immune system. In humans, the appendix is full of immune cells, including T cells, B cells, and natural killer cells, and good gut bacteria.

• The appendix is not a useless organ @ Boing Boing

• Your Appendix Isn't Useless, After All @ YouTube

• Appendix (anatomy) @ Wikipedia

User bobtato observes, on the Boing Boing comment board:

This seems like a pattern with any body part that is basically a little dead-end pocket (tonsils, gall bladders, appendices, sinuses) – the popular wisdom is "you don’t need that cos it doesn’t do anything", based on an early-20th-century engineering mindset where things are understood as a flowchart where everything has inputs, outputs and a self-contained Function. That thinking is not well-equipped to understand little gnarls and curlicues that passively modulate the working of the overall system.

It’s the same thinking that leads people to persistently dismiss (for example) the economic importance of unwaged labor or the arts. Most real science and engineering has moved past thinking like this, but I think the public cling to it because it justifies authoritarian, daddy-centric hierarchies.

https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/the-appendix-is-not-a-useless-organ/153602/5

To which I replied:

Artist as healthy bacterium in the guts of society. I like it.