What are vestigial organs and give some examples?? Also what are alleles??

Vestigial organs are those particular organs that are present as reduced structures and they do not perform any functions in the body. As the organs are developed and functional in lower organisms, they act as the proof of evolution. For example, appendix, ear muscles, nictitating membrane of eye, mammary gland in man are some of the vestigial organs present in human body.

Alleles are group of genes which may present in alternative form in the specific locus of specific chromosome. They may be in pair or multiple.

  • 31
This is an organ that served a purpose in the distant ancestor of an organism, but is not longer pertinent in the presently existing, recently evolved, organisms.
An example would be the muscles we have that can move our ears a bit. Since human ears cannot be reorientated like some animals can (and presumably our long gone ancestors from million of years ago) then those muscle do not serve much purpose (except for mild entertainment).
Another example would be our tail bone

An allele is one of a number of alternative forms of the same gene or same genetic locus (generally a group of genes). It is the alternative form of a gene for a character producing different effects

  • 5
What are you looking for?