eli5 How was a whole organ’s usefulness unknown for such a long time(appendix)?

Question

eli5 How was a whole organ’s usefulness unknown for such a long time(appendix)?

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Answer 1

Think of the appendix as a blind ended outpouching of your intestine, it’s made of the exact same cells as the intestine and so functionally you’d think it would work the same, except it’s blind ended, so it can’t push poop anywhere, so the functionality of it goes out the door. This led scientists back to the drawing board where they finally discovered good bacteria and the fact that the appendix was full of that shit, and there’s so much about good bacteria we are yet to learn, and that’s precisely why we only just figured out it actually served a function coz we still literally learning what the function of good bacteria is