Whales still have vestigial hipbones - they lost their pelvic girdles over milli

Question

Whales still have vestigial hipbones - they lost their pelvic girdles over millions of years. How much longer (long time, short time, etc - not in years!) do you think it will it take for whales to lose their vestigial pelvic bones? Please provide some supporting evidence for your hypothesis.

An excerpt on vestigial bones is provided below:

"As environmental changes select against some structures, others persist even if they are not used. A vestigial structure has no apparent function in one species, yet it is homologous to a functional organ in another. (Darwin compared vestigial structures to silent letters in a word, such as the “g” in night; they are not pronounced, but they offer clues to the word's origin.) In some whales and snakes, tiny leg bones are vestigial, retained from vertebrate ancestors that used legs to walk on land (figure 13.9).

Humans have several vestigial organs. The tiny muscles that make hairs stand on end helped our furry ancestors conserve heat or show aggression; in us, they apparently serve only as the basis of goose bumps. Human embryos have tails, which usually disintegrate long before birth; in other vertebrates, tails persist into adulthood. We also retain a trio of muscles that help other mammals move their ears in a way that improves hearing (most of us can't use these muscles). Each vestigial structure links us to other animals that still use these features.

Figure 13.9

Vestigial Structures.(a) Some snakes have tiny hind leg bones that are vestigial but (b) detectable only in the skeleton. (c) Some whales likewise have a vestigial pelvis and hind limbs.

Explanation / Answer

vestigeal organs are those organ which have very less or negligible importance in a particular species because they have evelved in a way that they don

t need that organ anymore to sustain, moreover if that organ is removed they will feel easy to adapt in the sourrounding and sustain.

in case of pelvic bone of the whale it was thaught that the plevic bone will disappear in some million years but it persist not only because the vestigeal organ shows some of the responses but because there counterparts have some use of it.

this is not the first time vestigeal organ has shown some importance , because they have common decent, a organ start to diminish mor equikly when older organism start to find survival difficukties with that organ only and new species without that organ start becoming superior and if that is not the case then that vestigeal organ will survive with rudimentary functionality as in case of pelvic bone of whales

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