Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

Evolution cannot plan ahead and always create structures that are suitable for an organism at a particular moment. The functional approaches that evolution “selected” at a certain moment can prove to be disadvantageous after some time when the particular organ completely develops in evolution. Consequently, organisms have a great many organs that are obviously suboptimal or even completely senseless in their design from the viewpoint of their present-day function. We have already mentioned the example of the eye in vertebrates with nerve fibers located in front of the retina in the optical pathway of beams and innervation of the pharynx in giraffes with a senseless many-meter-long loop reaching as far as the aorta. The frequent occurrence of these senseless structures indicates that the organisms were certainly not created according to a pre-established plan, but developed by the “blind” opportunist process of biological evolution.