The laryngeal nerve is the nerve that connects the brain to the larynx (the voice box).
Instead of connecting directly, the nerve goes all the way down through one side of the neck, through the heart, then back up the other side of the neck to connect to the voice box.
This evolutionary redundancy is more than prominent in giraffes, where the distance between the brain and the larynx is about 5cm apart. Yet, the nerve is about 15ft in length.
We get used to the idea that evolution is so good at producing beautiful elegant animals that look as though they’ve been designed. We forget that sometimes they’re not perfect and there are imperfections and the imperfections are very revealing because they’re exactly the kind of imperfections you’d expect from the accidents of history if there were no designer.
[…]
Remember that a designer [or] an engineer can go back to the drawing board, throw away the old design, start afresh with what looks more sensible. A designer has foresight. Evolution can’t go back to the drawing board. Evolution has no foresight.
— Richard Dawkins demonstrates laryngeal nerve of the giraffe
