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Roxolan comments on Rationality Quotes November 2013 - Less Wrong
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Comments (388)
Okay, but why should the reproductive outlets be there too?
I agree connotationally, but the comic only answers half of the question.
I am a fan of SMBC, but the entire explanation is wrong. The events that led to the integration of reproductive and digestive systems happened long before a terrestrial existence of vertebrates, and certainly long before hands. To get a start on a real explanation you have to go back to early bilaterals:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/chb/lectures/anatomy9.html
As near as I can tell it was about pipe reuse. But you can't make a funny comic about that (or maybe you can?). Zach is a "bard", not a "wizard." He entertains.
Try carrying the fetus and giving birth from any other location. I suppose having the fun parts somewhere else than the reproductive dumping tube could be nice, but wouldn't make any sense.
Consider the chicken, with its ingenious production line of eggs. Constant fertilization from a different orifice seems ideal, as (the source I just Googled suggests that) chickens have very short fertilization cycles. (They don't have separate orifices. Poor cloacas.)
Since fertilization occurs at one end of a long tube, and birth occurs at the other, I wouldn't be surprised if the optimal arrangement involved separate organs.