Question: how can you have extra body parts

Rebecca Dewey answered on 25 Jun 2015:

There are two different questions here and I’m not sure which you mean.

Some people are accidentally born with extra body parts, usually because something went a little bit wrong when they were developing in the uterus. Usually these body parts are harmless, but also quite useless as they don’t function properly, so they would probably be surgically removed.

Or do you mean can we have someone attach some extra robotic body parts to us? Yes! I don’t see why not, in theory! However, in practice, what do you want? How would it interact with your body? You could probably have someone make (for example) a prosthetic tail, and attach it to your back. They could even find a nerve that can control its movement using electrical impulses. You might then be able to learn to control it by learning how to use that nerve in a special way to make the movements. Buy why? What benefit would that be? It would be very cool, yes, but we need that expertise and money and resources to make replacement body parts for people who have had their own body parts amputated or are born without them.

Alternatively, we kind of do have extra body parts already. We have wearable technology, such as glasses, etc, and we can get these to do extra things, like record video or search the internet. I think the future is going to be about blurring the lines between what we actually call our body, and what is technology that we can attach to our bodies.