That would be the laryngeal nerve. It’s been with us vertebrates for a long time.
I take your, “for zero reason,” to indicate that it’s silly that it’s so long in a giraffe. And it is, because it connects the larynx and the brain, two bits that aren’t very far apart. You’d never design it that way from scratch.
But the laryngeal nerve’s length has a reason: it loops around the heart and it developed in our fish-like ancestors. At that time, it wasn’t silly for the nerve to wrap around the heart, because fish don’t have necks and thus the nerve was about the same length whether it wrapped around the heart or not. As necks developed, evolution found it easier to lengthen the nerve than to reroute it. So here we and giraffes both exist, having much longer laryngeal nerves than you’d engineer if you were making us from scratch.
A giraffe has a vein or nerve that goes all the way up to its head for zero reason.
It’s incredibly inconvenient and difficult, but it wasn’t before their necks were absolutely stupid.
That would be the laryngeal nerve. It’s been with us vertebrates for a long time.
I take your, “for zero reason,” to indicate that it’s silly that it’s so long in a giraffe. And it is, because it connects the larynx and the brain, two bits that aren’t very far apart. You’d never design it that way from scratch.
But the laryngeal nerve’s length has a reason: it loops around the heart and it developed in our fish-like ancestors. At that time, it wasn’t silly for the nerve to wrap around the heart, because fish don’t have necks and thus the nerve was about the same length whether it wrapped around the heart or not. As necks developed, evolution found it easier to lengthen the nerve than to reroute it. So here we and giraffes both exist, having much longer laryngeal nerves than you’d engineer if you were making us from scratch.
Yep, evolution doesn’t get do overs.
In a way it does. Just ask crabs.
Fookin’ casuals…
Source?
Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
Why waste time with words when no words do trick?
On one hand it sucks most people didn’t get the reference.
But I like to think it was just because my impression of Kevin was so good.
That’s an amazing sentence
The issue is that it traverses the neck twice, going all the way down from the brain and all the way back up to its endpoint.
Yeah, I got it. Was just commenting on the poetry of the sentence.