135
Isn't it weird that we have exactly five fingers and five toes on each hand and foot.
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report the message goes away and you never worry about it.
The wikipedia article Polydactyly in stem-tetrapods has some explanations on how we ended up with 5 fingers and toes.
The gist of it is that tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrate animals) evolved from a fish similar to a lobe-finned fish that had 5 sets of bones in each of its fins that evolved into fingers and toes. Some tetrapods have subsequently lost digits but the basal state was five.
There's a book, Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin that's full of this kind of stuff. Highly recommend.
I love it. So many things in the world don’t really have an “explanation,” they have a “story.”
The reason they are as they are is just because of prior conditions.
Amazing book. I recommend reading it if you're interested in evolution.