Dumb Parts Your Body Doesn't Even Need

If you look close enough, your body is like a really gross episode of Hoarders: it might be structurally sound in a general sense, but it's full of stuff you don't need, and some of those things might be doing more harm than good. You're a gangly mess of inefficient, extra junk, and it's time to simplify. If you're looking to scale down, here are a bunch of body parts that you really don't even need.

While your umbilical cord connects your pre-natal self to the life-giving blood of your mom while you're living inside the world's most limiting apartment, the stomach scar left over after you've started a life on your own has absolutely no biological purpose. Most scars heal, but there's no as-seen-on-TV ointment that'll cover up your useless bellybutton. On its best days, it's an especially fertile microbiome for weird bacteria, or it can serve as an existing scar that surgeons can cut through again for easy access to deal with organ problems in the vicinity. But unless you've just totally run out of parts to pierce, you can just wall off the whole hole and be better off.

Anatomists continue to debate whether or not the human appendix really has any value, other than getting inflamed, blowing up, and taking your whole body with it. While a human can definitely live without an appendix, it's suggested that the appendix functions as a panic room for your body's beneficial bacteria when you're suffering from intestinal distress. Your body flushes out everything it can get ahold of, and the good stuff comes back out when the danger has passed, though the same thing can now be accomplished through the use of supplements. The appendix is really just a ticking, squishy time bomb.

When it works properly, the gallbladder produces and stores digestive bile to help your body handle edible fats. But it's more like a non-essential tributary to the great, winding river of your intestines. If the gallbladder or pancreas get blocked off by indigestible gallstones, it's nothing but pain, and possibly the removal of the whole darn thing. Those who live without gallbladders rarely report any serious problems, aside from a period of indigestion while their bodies adjust to altered bile quantities. As far as organs go, however, this guy can be evicted without a problem.

A long time ago, before humans developed the ability to run electric baseboard heating through their handsomely-appointed master bedrooms, they were covered in a thick layer of hair to keep them protected from the elements. Today, alopecia is clearly not a death sentence, as today's conveniences have completely overridden the human need for hirsuteness. Even the most important hairs on your whole body, your eyelashes and eyebrows, are only a light barrier against eye irritants, so take our advice: shave it all off before the cruel ravages of time do it for you in weird patches.

Scientists generally agree that our annoying third set of molars are remnants from a time when our jaws were larger and could simply fit more teeth. Over time, our skulls went through a recession as we ate less green stuff...but no one told our teeth. As a result, wisdom teeth don't always fit into our heads, sit dangerously close to sensitive nerves, and are known to cause intense pain if they don't grow in perfectly. Today, their only real purpose is to completely ruin your day and give dentists and oral surgeons their second homes in Denver.

About 20 percent of humans can wiggle their ears, but aside from mildly impressing a drunk audience, there's really no purpose for the function. You can see the usefulness of moveable ears in other mammals, however, as ear mobility is useful when channeling in a full range of surrounding sounds when you're out on the hunt, or simply trying to avoid being hunted. Moving our own ears doesn't have any noticeable effect on our hearing due to the shape of our ears, but back in the day, those fleshy radar dishes saved lives.

Dudes, biology has definitively told you that you don't need your nips in any way, shape, or form. In fact, they're pretty much just the part of your body that biology forgot to paint over when it decided whether or not you were going to be a boy or a girl. While nipples of the opposite sex have countless benefits when it comes to raising a healthy child, male nipples are just there to look weird, and if you're from the worst part of the '90s, to get pierced during summer break.

Unlike most of the other crappy parts your body can do without, your spleen actually has a pretty useful purpose, if you still have it. Not only does it serve as a backup source of blood should you suddenly lose a bunch, but it also works with the immune system and recycles your body's iron. All of these are useful things, but if you didn't have them, you totally wouldn't die. At the very worst, the removal of a problematic spleen results in a marginally higher rate of heart disease and pneumonia. Plus, if you've removed all of the extra stuff we've mentioned so far, you're probably already a few pounds lighter, you sexy thing.

You need at least one kidney to live, but that second one is a total freeloader. A single kidney is kind of an amazing little organ, keeping many of your body's systems in balance, from filtering out your body's waste products and minimizing your body's acid content, to keeping your blood pressure regulated. Not only that, but it'll make a tasty dish if you're in a bind. If your luck takes a bad turn and both of your kidneys fail you, you may ask an especially generous, compatible donor for one of theirs. While the donor can no longer pursue a career in wrestling or football, the decline in their quality of life is very minimal, according to the folks at the National Kidney Foundation.

Popular Science tells us that if your little toe happens to fall off or get caught in a thresher, you'll still be able to run that marathon. Your big toe is pretty important for keeping you balanced, and to a slightly lesser degree, so are the rest of your piggies. By the time you reach the runt of the litter, however, you're not getting a whole lot of use. Most of the work your foot does happens in the metatarsals, or the bones inside of the foot, and if everyone in the world woke up one day without little toes, we wouldn't even have to invest in a different pair of shoes.