Intestinum Caecum
I should like to expound upon the intestinum caecum a bit, if I may without offending both those who hold with Darwinism and those that do not.
Seems that all mammals have an intestinum caecum, or cecum, for short. The cecum, on a relative size scale, is larger in those mammals who are herbivores and may be almost nonexistent in carnivores. For omnivores like us homo sapiens, it's somewhere in between. Some mammals have two cecuae and our appendix, which serves no know function, may be a vestigal second cecum.
And just what does the cecum do? Well, it is the place in the digestive track where the polysaccride in our food that we know as cellulose is broken down in a fermentation process into a saccride — glucose — that our bodies can use as fuel. So, if you are a cow or rabbit, you need a big cecum.
In the development of the human embryo, the cecum is relatively large during the first five weeks of gestitation. By birth, however, it has shrunk to a relative small part of the digestive tract, serving to connect the large and small intestines.
And, until yesterday, I didn't even know I had one!
Seems that all mammals have an intestinum caecum, or cecum, for short. The cecum, on a relative size scale, is larger in those mammals who are herbivores and may be almost nonexistent in carnivores. For omnivores like us homo sapiens, it's somewhere in between. Some mammals have two cecuae and our appendix, which serves no know function, may be a vestigal second cecum.
And just what does the cecum do? Well, it is the place in the digestive track where the polysaccride in our food that we know as cellulose is broken down in a fermentation process into a saccride — glucose — that our bodies can use as fuel. So, if you are a cow or rabbit, you need a big cecum.
In the development of the human embryo, the cecum is relatively large during the first five weeks of gestitation. By birth, however, it has shrunk to a relative small part of the digestive tract, serving to connect the large and small intestines.
And, until yesterday, I didn't even know I had one!
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