Are Human Toes Technically Vestigial?
Vestigial structures are those that have lost their primary or main function through the evolutionary process, although they may still maintain some kind of function. One of the best clues to whether a structure is vestigial is the presence of similar, functional structures in other organisms. The technical definition of vestigial organs is an organ for which the function does not confer enough of a survival advantage to be retained via evolution, as compared to the random effect of mutation. For instance, canines and felines have the ability to make endogenous (self-produced) vitamin C; this ability is coded in the form of a series of functional genes within their DNA. Primates, including humans, have lost the ability to make the vitamin endogenously, although they retain a non-functional copy of the gene within their DNA. This broken gene is a vestigial structure: it was functional at one time but has since lost that quality. Each of the structures that you describe above has functio
