this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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me_irl

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[–] gothic_lemons@lemmy.world 6 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

What a terrible day to have eyes

[–] LORDSMEGMA@sh.itjust.works 23 points 11 hours ago

Do enough cocaine and you too can have one big hole!

[–] xylol@leminal.space 3 points 7 hours ago

We also should have one singular top tooth and one bottom tooth like a beak

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 25 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (4 children)

Nature loves symmetry. It's why we have two ear holes, two eye holes, two pee holes, etc.

[–] Lumidaub@feddit.org 17 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

How is one hole not symmetrical if it's right in the middle?

[–] Enkrod@feddit.org 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

What, like our mouth and entire digestive tract? Or bellybutton? Or genitals? Yeah no. A single hole is perfectly symmetrical, not to mention that there were and are asymmetrical animals as well as those that are not left-right but radially symmetrical (for example jellyfish). The only reason is, our nose holes used to be on opposite sides of our heads and only relatively recently evolved to be close together.

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 11 hours ago

Hmm, I wouldn't be so sure about that.

[–] terranoid@lemmy.cafe 6 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

It's so we can smell in 3D

[–] antbricks@lemmy.today 4 points 9 hours ago

I'll assume this isn't a joke. We did evolve from mammals that used smell to hunt, so yeah, directional smelling sure makes sense to me.

[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Liver, heart, spleen. Also lungs aren't symmetrical despite there being two. The outside of a human body might follow some degree of symmetry, but the inside is just spaghetti code.

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)
[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 2 points 6 hours ago

Well, my inside is popcorn and cola currently.

[–] Enkrod@feddit.org 6 points 12 hours ago

Wait... you have two pee holes?

In the earliest vertebrates, there was only one nostril and olfactory pouch, and the nasal passage was connected to the hypophysis. The same anatomy is observed in the most primitive living vertebrates, the lampreys and hagfish. In gnathostome ancestors, the olfactory apparatus gradually became paired (presumably to allow sense of direction of smells), and freeing the midline from the nasal passage allowed evolution of jaws.

The real reason is, that at some point our ancestors developed directional smelling and needed two holes, one for left, one for right... and since you cannot evolve out of your ancestry, that trait stuck around.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 10 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

If I remember right no - the way the sinuses are layed out makes them insanely efficient at filling/emptying air, more akin to a rocket nozzle and vastly better than just a simple tube with a single orifice (of the same size as the nostrils combined) would be.

[–] rockerface@lemmy.cafe 3 points 7 hours ago

Also warming up cold air in the winter. And making sure the olfactory receptors hit enough particles to recognize smells accurately.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Hah! You losers never nose fucked anyone!

[–] JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Look at needle dick over here getting all the action!

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Doesn't matter; had sex

[–] usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 hours ago

Nose job takes on a new meaning

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

The bump on our faces is to stop us from suffocating when lying face down.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Somehow knowing that our common ancestors were so fucking dumb they had to evolve a way to properly breathe at night makes me feel a little bit better about the present....but not much.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 points 7 hours ago

Babies often suffocate if it sleeps in a crib that has soft things against its side. But on a flat surface it's fine.

[–] Solely_a_Catt@programming.dev 1 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Don't know if that is really the reason, but we are only using one nostril to breathe at the time. Which one gets used changes every few hours. So one is in use and the other one can rest (probably cleaning up from all the particles that may clog it up)

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 8 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Gonna expand on that.

It's called the nasal cycle.

And, it isn't necessarily the case that you only breathe through one nostril exclusively. To the contrary, most people will have flow through both. What happens is that the dominance of them cycles.

Back inside the nose, you get boners.

Okay, not really, but kinda. There's these sections that are made of tissue that functions very similar to the way the penis and clitoris do. They fill with blood and swell. Erectile tissue.

Every few hours, one side ~~gets horny~~ swells while the other shrinks. The one that's ~~limp~~ detumesced is where you'll have the most air flow.

However, for most people, that tissue doesn't totally block air flow, it just decreases it significantly. You can test this by blocking each nostril in turn from the outside. Typically, you'll be able to breathe fine from both, but one will just be fine, not fully open and smooth.

While there's no certainty in "why", since evolution isn't prone to developer notes, but the understanding I found back when I first heard about this was that it's a combination of giving each passage time to flush out particulates, remoisturize, and heal any damage taken. Those are certainly benefits of it happening, but we can't really be sure if that's happenstance, or the primary trait that was selected for by environmental pressures.

[–] Solely_a_Catt@programming.dev 1 points 45 minutes ago

thank you^^ was quite interesting to read through

[–] Viceversa@lemmy.world 0 points 9 hours ago

Test your claim.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

You could still breathe out of your mouth.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 11 hours ago

Depends on how deep the dick in your nose is.