True or false? Some traits are considered vestigial because they ...

Question

True or false? Some traits are considered vestigial because they existed long ago.

Accepted Answer

Welcome back. Here's our next question. Human appendix and wings and flightless birds are examples of blank. Well, in this case these are both structures that had an important purpose in an ancestral uh organism but are not important or not nearly as important in the modern species. So that would be a choice be vestigial trait. So important. An ancestral species, not modern. So let's look at the other answer. Choices understand why they're not the correct answers here. Choice A says transitional features. Well, a transitional feature would be something that's sort of uh midway that has a form between an ancestral structure and the modern structure. But that would be if we were looking at, say, the ancestors of humans or flightless birds. So we're talking about them as they exist today, the modern uh species today. So transitional feature is not what we're looking for. Choice. C says non adaptive traits. A non adaptive trait would be something that has a neutral effect on population fitness. So the ability of an organism to survive and reproduce. Um Well, these are things that had a beneficial effect obviously at some point in the past, but no longer serve that beneficial uh that positive effect. So that's not quite what we're looking for because they didn't arise in a non adaptive way. And finally, homologous structures, homologous structures would be um structures that are currently different. So distinct structures inherited from a common ancestor, I should say inherited from the same structure in a common ancestor. So example would be the flipper of whale um versus the arm of a human. So they looked different and distinct in the modern species, but they were descended from the same structure and ancestral species, but the human appendix and the wings of flightless birds. Obviously we're not descended from the same structure and ancestral street in an ancestral species, so that's not our answer choice. And again, human appendix and wings and flightless birds. Examples of be vestigial traits. See you in the next video.

True or false? Some traits are considered vestigial because they existed long ago.

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