4. Lowchen ($5,000 to $8,000) LÃ¶wchen means âlittle lionâ in German, a fitting name for this small dog with an impressive mane of hair and talent for agility. The breed is often given a âlionâ trim, too: clipped close to the skin at the hindquarters, with cuffs of hair around the ankles and a plumed tail.
Vestigial describes an organ or body part that continues to exist without retaining its original function, such as our appendix. It's most often used in biology to describe something that either didn't finish developing or has become, through evolution, pretty much useless.
One example is vestigial structures. A vestigial structure is a feature that was an adaptation for the organism's ancestor, but that evolved to be non-functional because the organism's environment changed. Fish species that live in completely dark caves have vestigial, non-functional eyes. When their sighted ancestors ended up living in caves, there was no longer any natural selection that maintained the function of the fishes' eyes. So, fish with better sight no longer out-competed fish with worse sight. Today, these fish still have eyes â but they are not functional and are not an adaptation; they are just the by-products of the fishes' evolutionary history. In fact, biologists have a lot to say about what is and is not an adaptation.