r/allthequestions • u/ContemplativeLynx • 5h ago
Random Question 💭 If human bodies are "intelligently designed", what are the stupidest design flaws made by the creator?
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u/LadyBogangles14 5h ago
Our spines are not really built for us to stand upright.
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u/OkMention9988 5h ago
The fact that our extremely important knees are held together with the equivalent of rubber bands.
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u/Time-Subject-3195 4h ago
We breathe out of the same tube that we get food stuck in.
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u/RutabagaDoll4155 🇳🇱 Netherlands 4h ago
You shouldn't get food stuck in there, it's the air tube!
But yeah, having the breathing tube next to the feeding tube isn't ideal for a few reasons. One is indeed getting something stuck in either one and closing off both. Another is inhaling your own puke, because being able to puke is good but breathing is also important (not while doing it together).
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u/Spaz-Mouse384 1h ago
As I have gotten older, I think along with the rest of my skeletal/muscular system systems, my airway and esophagus muscles have gotten lax. It seems very easy nowadays to get things stuck in my air tube.
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u/TactLacker710 4h ago
We are basically a few seconds away from suffocation at every point in our lives. Skip two normal breaths without drawing in a big one beforehand and the panic starts.
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u/UncontainedOne 2h ago
dumbest thing ever, our ancestor, the lung fish, can breathe and swallow at the same time so we know that it's possible
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u/MuckRaker83 5h ago
Sewage plant right next to the amusement park
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u/cschiff89 1h ago
I heard this in the context of an engineering joke:
Three engineers are discussing the designer of the human body. The first one says, "With all the joints and moving parts, it must have been a mechanical engineer". The second one says, "No, it had to have been an electrical engineer; look at the complex wiring of the nervous system". The third one says, "You're both wrong; it was a civil engineer. Who else but a civil engineer would run a toxic waste line through a recreational area!"
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u/Cactus2711 1h ago
‘Sewage plant’ is only one way to look at it.
Some of us see two amusement parks.
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u/Sure-Doctor-2052 54m ago
"We're all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars."..Lord Byron I think.
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u/Fancy-Duty-2031 5h ago
Why can’t I see in ultraviolet or infrared???
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u/Reality_speaker 3h ago
If we saw all the electromagnetic spectrum we would be blind
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u/ScienceGeeker 1h ago
That's just not true. It would obviously be processed seperately. Same as small has different receptors that can identify different molecules.
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u/IndicationCalm1640 1h ago edited 56m ago
Off the top of my head on little sleep so some things may be slightly wonky:
The biggest reason is just how we evolved (there's a catch to this later), we have photopigments in our eyes that are capable of absorbing photons in a particular range of energies. Visible light is at the right frequency for this.
Infrared: not enough energy from the photons Microwaves: even less energy
Both of the above could be useful, but not as useful as visible light which we have an abundance of.
UV is more complicated: some is in range and has the potential to react to our cones, some is out. Our lens' blocks a lot of it due to its potential to damage eyesight. People who've had their lens' removed may partly see it as a violet colour.
X-Ray/Gamma: literally just not compatible with life in large amounts.
In a way we can see the full spectrum, just with instruments and not with our eyes.
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u/Borg453 5h ago
Cancer
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u/KingArthursCodpiece 3h ago
Definitely a design flaw!
Engineer: "Were going to design a computer that is conscious, self learning, creative and has huge data storage, and we are going to build a cell-based exoskeleton around it, with the cells being self-renewing to enhance longevity. Biologist: "What happens if the self renewing process gets out of control? Won't that cause the computer to stop working?" Engineer: "F*cking biologists. Cant happen because we are building in a fail safe device we call apoptosis, which ensures cell proliferation is controlled." Biologist: "Life finds a way...you dumb bastards"
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u/AquilaSpot 2h ago
FWIW there's a long list of countermeasures against cancer, many of which function in very elegant ways. A LOT has to go wrong to get cancer, it's just that we've got so many cells that it's bound to happen eventually.
Don't get me started on the recurrent laryngeal nerves though.
source: med school. god save me.
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u/UslessYouth 5h ago
This hernia that I just had surgery on seems like a horrible design. I use my stomach muscles for literally everything. I can't even fart without wanting to scream.
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u/IsIeOfCannabis 🇺🇸 United States 4h ago
Look on the bright side. No one will hear you fart if you scream.
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u/RevolutionaryElk7446 5h ago
This whole free will thing kinda takes me places I shouldn't be every once in a while. Not sure if that's design or user error though.
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u/IsIeOfCannabis 🇺🇸 United States 4h ago
Free will: “serve me or die”
“Believe in me and I will save you.”
“Save me from what?”
“What I’m going to do to you if you don’t believe in me.”
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u/AgentCoulson2 4h ago
Easily the biggest flaw in most (though not all) forms of Christian and Muslim theology.
I don't believe in such things myself, but in principle I think that the version of Hell portrayed in stories like the Lucifer tv show, or the book and film What Dreams May Come, where Hell is essentially just the torture of one's own guilty conscience is the most reasonable. But the idea of eternal damnation because you neglected to worship the right deity? That shit is seriously messed up.
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u/unclejoe1917 5h ago
A lot of them. The human body, aside from our brain, is pretty much F-tier. For one, I believe our spines have yet to fully catch up to our evolution to being bipedal. We're weak. Our young are helpless for well over a decade. We have a rather small window of temperature comfort. None of our five senses are particularly dazzling.
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u/DonAmechesBonerToe 4h ago
The brain even has to work overtime to compensate for shitty equipment. Like hey eyeball, you’ve got one job and you did it upside down, now brain has to constantly be adjusting for your crappy work
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u/stemrust 2h ago
I need to disagree with you a bit here with the f-tier. Humans have above average vision and are particularly good with seeing details, depth perception, and color. Our ability to smell is not bad and we are very sensitive to the smell of geosmin (associated with water).
The biggest counter argument is that we have hella endurance and can run/jog for-effing-ever. A group of non-fat humans could chase many prey species to exhaustion and take them down. We’re not the fastest, but - again non-fat - humans have some serious jogging capabilities.
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u/Safe-Ad-8921 2h ago
Years ago in biology the explanation from the professor was that having reason and problem solving to the degree of humans made the other adaptations or lack thereof unimportant. Enough so that we continually pass down the useless stuff as we dont just do what most animals do... which is die when we can't adapt. Intelligence itself being the adaptation.
Edit, horrible run on sentence.
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u/TheSlideBoy666 5h ago
The recurrent laryngeal nerve. It’s especially “the stupidest design flaw” when one considers it’s also present in the giraffe.
→ More replies (3)
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u/ZucchiniAlert2582 5h ago
A bunch of hair around the butthole. Like seriously, wtf?
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u/King_Roberts_Bastard 4h ago
Its to prevent chafing. We walk upright, so our butt cheeks would be constantly running together, except we have cylindrical hair there. That hair rolls as we walk, which helps our cheeks slide past each other without chafing
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u/KingArthursCodpiece 3h ago
I always felt butt cheeks are a bad idea. Animals without them can fart in silence, thereby perfecting 'silent but deeply'. Plus there is the added advantage of the 10 second dump that requires no wiping (yes, I know they couldnt anyway, but after your dog or cat takes a crap, have you ever noticed.... sigh, sorry but I just cant bring myself to discuss the post-shit, pre-lick state of my dogs a-hole)
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u/ZucchiniAlert2582 1h ago
Okay sure, but a bit of peach fuzz oughta get the job done, right? Long, scraggly poop-retaining hairs seem like the wrong spec.
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u/OG-BigMilky 4h ago
TEETH.
If you’re an omnipotent being that created all reality and these teeth are the best you can do… then maybe you’re not so omnipotent and that leads to cracks in the foundation.
OR
There’s no such thing as an omnipotent creator.
I’m sticking with the latter.
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u/Safe-Ad-8921 2h ago
Mammalian adaptation is fascinating.
On one hand, you have some species with teeth that grow continuously. In some cases like beavers their teeth even contain iron to make them even harder to wear down. Beavers will kill themselves with their own body if they dont continuously use their teeth .They are born to cut down and and gnaw on trees or die. Amazing ecological niche. Several rodents and other animals have the same trait.
On the other hand, you have humans, and the bast majority of other animals. We get two sets and thats it. Same as cats and dogs. The second set eventually pushes the first set out and that's it.
Humans with no teeth have to rely on their brain to find food they can eat. Ever had a tooth pulled? I had a molar that went bad and wow, eating is not the same.
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u/BlinkypoetEmu 🇺🇸 United States 2h ago
I thought it was Komodo dragons that had iron in their teeth. Interesting.
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u/foreverlegending 4h ago
The positioning of the balls. I mean of all places they just dangle there totally unprotected
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u/Useful_Homework2367 4h ago
Yeah why not make it so that sperm can just be made at body temperature?
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u/Budsygus 4h ago
Food and air go in the same holes until one of them hits a little flap and gets diverted.
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u/Long_Exercise_7701 3h ago
Dude turn 40 and find out.
Our joints aren't build to last, our spine is a joke, there are gray hair everywhere and every day you wake up and wonder what might hurt today.
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u/Paddyaubs 1m ago
I am 45. I went for a nap. I woke up and had twisted my ankle.
When I was 44 I slipped a disc whilst sneezing.
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u/MasterSoftBird 5h ago
The appendix.
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u/joelnicity 4h ago
Seems pretty useful:
An appendix is a supplementary section at the back of a book that adds helpful extra material without interrupting the main chapters. It’s usually optional and can include things like charts, tables, data, references, or technical details that support what the book already covers.
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u/Deaconse 🇺🇸 United States 3h ago
We have a face but without a preface. We have an index - two, in fact - and they're fingers as well so that's really efficient. But why an appendix?
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u/Jaduardo 5h ago
Putting the amusement park right next to the waste processing facility. (Credit: Neil deGrasse Tyson)
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u/ParkingAnxious2811 4h ago
They're both amusement parks if your partner knows how to clean themselves.
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u/SeaFans-SeaTurtles 4h ago
Menopause. Where a significant amount of women completely lose interest in sex- yet their male partners want sex long into their old age. God designed this?
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u/Magnum-3000 3h ago
Backs blowout so easily. Those little hairs in your ears never regenerate. The liver should be even better than it is.
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u/Quirky_Shake2506 3h ago
The fact you can bite yourself on your cheek whilst eating ..what idiot designed that??
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u/Bladrak01 3h ago
The fact that legs seem designed to guide impacts towards the groin. And also that the optimal temperature for sperm is below normal human body temperature, leading to the vulnerability of external testicles.
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u/Sad-Clock8937 2h ago
People with uterus bleeding for a week every month for like 40 years seems pretty stupid.
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u/hideous-boy 2h ago
balls on the outside. Surely it's detrimental in the process of natural selection to have the thing necessary for procreation dangling helplessly and fragilely as you run through the woods from a bear or whatever
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u/ISOgoosebumps 2h ago
Some sexes being issued the wrong model. Suppose that’s more of a manufacturing issue, than design.
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u/CaffinatedJackRussel 1h ago
The pancreas has one job and that’s to make insulin. All of a sudden <whinny voice> I don’t want to do that any more. Then when it gets sick it doesn’t say anything until it’s stage four. Useless little organ.
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u/laughing_at_napkins 5h ago
Sex and excrement use the same organs.
Eating, drinking, and breathing all use the same ingress point
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u/TheProperGanda68 5h ago
Not sure about your first claim but it’s genius design to incorporate multi functionality into windpipe.
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u/laughing_at_napkins 3h ago
What is genius about not being able to breath while eating and having a real chance to inhale food and water while ingesting either?
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u/Hefty-Resort871 4h ago
The esophagus and the wind pipe CROSSING. (They are separate when we are babies and as we age they shift and cross.
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u/Dothemath2 4h ago
Before the invention of the cesarean section and modern anesthesia, child birth was horrendously high risk.
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u/Unicron1982 4h ago
That lost limbs or organs don't regrow. If you lose an eye, it would be great if it just regrows. Same with an arm or a leg. Or spine injuries, those nerves just could heal so you can walk again after a while.
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u/edwardothegreatest 3h ago
Putting the pee tubes adjacent to or shared functions with sex tubes and poop tubes.
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u/MurphyBacon 3h ago
not having the natural instinct to swim/stay afloat. Puppies and kittens can swim if you throw them into a pool
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u/loopywolf 3h ago
For me, the worst part of the human "design" is the spine. It has 2 major weak points: Where it is abruptly kinked at the tail, when we stood up erect, and then kinked hard again to bring our head forward for walking
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u/Full_Metal_Paladin 2h ago
Breathing can only happen through 2 ports that are 1 inch apart from each other
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u/MRHaynes021 2h ago
As one writer (sorry I can’t remember the name) put it, why did they put the playground so close to the sewer plant.
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u/Inside_Pianist_7132 2h ago
I’m a dude and it’s periods. Most other mammals are perfectly fine without making their females hate their lives once a month for the audacity to not be pregnant.
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u/The_Onyx_Ogre 1h ago
We produce so much waste and require to eat. An intelligent creator would just design us capable of doing photosynthesis and get all of the energy we need from the sun.
We make robots with solar panels. Why would an intelligent designer make us needing to kill something to eat
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u/StructEngineer91 4h ago
1) making women bleed once a month
2) making it so that food that tastes good isn't the best for our body
3) having the male "plumbing" be both super sensitive and unprotected on the exterior of the body.
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u/Excellent-Ad-7394 🇺🇸 United States 5h ago
Eating drinking and breathing out of the same face hole.
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u/blueandwhite1993 5h ago
Appendix
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u/joelnicity 4h ago
It serves a good purpose-
An appendix is a supplementary section at the back of a book that adds helpful extra material without interrupting the main chapters. It’s usually optional and can include things like charts, tables, data, references, or technical details that support what the book already covers.
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u/KoalaChap7 5h ago
Speaking for my wife, the entirety of the female circulatory system. Extremities constantly being cold in a body that can't self regulate temperature anyway wreaks absolute havoc on mental and physical ability to mitigate, resource management, and larger pulmonary health.
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u/ApprehensiveMud2772 4h ago
Teeth should go like elephants, our eyes and hearing should rebuild itself like our skin, our toes and feet shouldn't bend at 45 degree angles in our 70s
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u/Critical-Bank5269 4h ago
Nipples for men
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u/joelnicity 4h ago
I believe that is because we all start out as female in the womb
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u/Ban-Circumcision-Now 🇺🇸 United States 3h ago
This: also down the underside of the shaft is a line where the proto-vagina closed up
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u/Chloe_Cascadia 4h ago
Cancer. The fact that our bodies can suddenly start to destroy itself.
Autoimmune diseases.
birth defects.
Prions. Imagine being killed because a protein is folded incorrectly.
No kind and loving deity would design flaws like this.
Imagine your own child. Now imagine understanding what cancer is, and voluntarily giving your own child cancer.
That's what I'm supposed to believe a kind and loving god did to us.
No sale, I know better.
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u/Lost-Friend-4564 3h ago
A girl I used to date said God should have put mens' penises on their chin.
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u/Meincommunicado 3h ago
Eyes. Why does everyone become either nearsighted or foresighted? And astigmatic. Or…all the other design flaws.
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u/Amethystium1956 3h ago
It's all a work in progress called evolution. The human animal species has a long way to go. Our brains have not developed much.
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u/Dare_Ask_67 2h ago
Depending on the situation and the location located there could be a lot of different design flaws. However. If you are seeing that man is created in God's image. The only flaw I see was when man was given free will. And by that I mean the ability to kill each other. That's the only flaw I can think of
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u/Safe-Ad-8921 2h ago
Crazy to imagine the bizarre traits thay made it down the line this far are helpful in some way we dont understand or were helpful back when we crush rat with club.
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u/JustUseCommonSense10 2h ago
Everyone has a blind spot, to find your blind spot, close one eye and focus on something small like writing on a piece of paper and slowly move it towards your face. Eventually it will disappear and you can hold this for a while, and I personally can feel my brain trying to complete the picture.
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u/jackstraw_65 2h ago
Since we’re unwilling to give up the NFL or boxing, the skull should’ve been designed with an extra layer of protection to withstand repeated blasts to the head.
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u/Realistic-Currency61 2h ago
Head should swivel 270 degrees like an owl so that we can tell when we're finished wiping our backside.
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u/ittleoff 2h ago edited 2h ago
The eyes and optic system are pretty horrible.
The amount of error correction, flaws, in the overall design, for getting the brain to experience a visual image, is pretty ridiculous, and likely will require glasses as lens hardens and focusing muscles weaken with age.
There are so many issues that should be obvious if you didn't start with the bias that humans are the ideal image of God.
Why the hell would god need to have the traits of a modern ape, which is where our 'godlike' 'soul' and 'spirit' come from.
What we prioritize as humans and where we get our morals are evolved ape strategies for things apes are interested in
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u/ZakalweB 2h ago
Ascending male urethra due to gonads being external. Just...no, man, dont make me massage my gooch to avoid pissy underwear ffs
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u/FormerStableGenius 2h ago
Urinary and reproductive outlet tubes the same in men, and apparently the same in women.
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u/craneguy 2h ago
The recurrent laryngeal nerve.
Instead of taking a straight path from the brain to the voice box (larynx), the left branch of this nerve dips down into the chest, loops under the aortic arch near the heart, and then travels all the way back up to the throat.
It's fucking daft is what it is.
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u/Admirable-Clothes-87 1h ago
Not to be indelicate but a woman's urinary apparatus - destined to fail!
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u/No_Seaworthiness8176 1h ago
Ignoring external sexual characteristics, a vertical pulmonary system making us extremely prone to pneumonia seems like a biggie.
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u/MartyPhelps 1h ago
Throat and genitalia, the most sensitive parts, are in the front, exposed and vulnerable.
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u/saywhatyouwill2873 1h ago
You need vitamin d to live but you can get skin cancer and die
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u/haikusbot 1h ago
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u/Flimsy_Ad3476 1h ago
Backs. Look, walking upright so as to be able to use both hands is great. But, an intelligent designer would have made this crucial part of the structure able to function over a lifetime and not so susceptible to injury.
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u/reckoner16 58m ago
Im writing all these down for the next family gathering.
Eyes. Why is my eyesight so fucking shit? Can’t see long, can barely see close.
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u/Opinionsare 43m ago
The undeniably stupidest of the human body is our need for very friendly gut bacteria for our entire lifetime.
Confirmation of this fact: treatment for some bad gut bacteria is a fecal matter transplant.
Some would say that this is proof positive that the human body wasn't designed.
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u/howard1111 20m ago
The prostate gland. Surely this organ could either: be done away with entirely and its functionality performed by other, existing organs; or designed so that it doesn't start growing again, and in perpetuity, when a man is around 60. Grrrr...
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u/Tricky-Background-66 10m ago
That all livings things need to kill and feed off of other living things to survive. W.T.F.
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u/ShigyDiggy 5h ago
A new set of teeth should come in when you’re 50-60 and not when you’re 5-6