User:Hyperbole/Large intestine

The large intestine, or colon, is the smaller of your two intestines. It can be distinguished from the other intestine, the small intestine, or semicolon, by the fact that the small intestine is much larger. The large intestine is thought to have been given its name by Vikings, who felt they were on a roll after naming an icy island "Greenland" and a green island "Iceland."

The large intestine has an infinite number of functions, of which its only function is the extraction of water from feces. Its other function is to provide a lubricated tunnel between the small intestine and rectum. Upon being removed from the body, it takes on several additional functions, which shall be discussed at length below.

Anatomy and physiology

The large intestine is nestled snugly between the small intestine and the anus. On either end of the large intestine, there is a Dixie cup that allows these two organs to play an occasional game of telephone using the large intestine as the string. However, their conversations are rarely interesting and have been described by several literary critics as "shitty."

The large intestine serves only one function: to extract water from feces. In this capacity, the large intestine can be said to serve a distinctly maternal function, in that its primary purpose is to nag the body about whether it's drinking enough. The message conveyed by large intestine is "there's plenty of perfectly good water left in that watery feces; drink your water or you won't get any dessert." Unfortunately for the body, this is a trick: dessert consists only of more watery feces.

Evolution

The large intestine exists in all mammals, suggesting that it must have evolved in a progenitor mammal that later evolved into all the other mammals. This progenitor mammal has not been discovered and has therefore not been assigned a Linnean taxonomy. However, for the purpose of this discussion, we will refer to it as Caenorhabditis elegans in order to avoid confusion.

The species preceding C. elegans possessed only a small intestine, making it impossible for individuals of this species to extract water from feces. Any water consumed by an individual of this species would, within minutes, leak freely from its anus. This caused them all to die of thirst, leading to the extinction of the species, which in turn led to its evolution into C. elegans.

C. elegans was a pioneer in the digestive disciplines; it evolved not only the large intestine, but also the rectum, or "poop chute," a slide that allowed stool to safely exit the body without suffering excessive bruising on the way down (and which, in a pinch, could serve as a male version of the vagina).