When a piece of skin, muscle, bone, nails, or hair gets removed or damaged, those usually grow back like nothing happened. So, why isn’t it possible for hands, or even something smaller like a finger to regrow? Or would a piece of meat just regrow there instead of something useful?
In: 563
That’s the evolutionary lot for many animals and not only humans.
That said, I’ve heard somewhere that there is a tradeoff between complexity and regeneration. The more complex a structure, the more specialized it must be to construct, and the more specialized, the more difficult it is to reproduce that structure once it is lost.
So perhaps, those body parts that can be regenerated are ones that are simple to regenerate. In animals, that would point to it being possible to regenerate tissues, but only rarely organs.
The only part of my answer I am certain is the first paragraph. The rest is my educated speculation.
Latest Answers