Evidence of Evolution
The extreme detour of this nerve (about 15 feet in the case of giraffes) is cited as evidence of evolution as opposed to intelligent design. The nerve's route would have been direct in the fish-like ancestors of modern tetrapods, traveling from the brain, past the heart, to the gills (as it does in modern fish). Over the course of evolution, as the neck extended and the heart became lower in the body, the laryngeal nerve was caught on the wrong side of the heart. Natural selection gradually lengthened the nerve by tiny increments to accommodate, resulting in the circuitous route now observed.
Read more about this topic: Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve
Famous quotes containing the words evidence of, evidence and/or evolution:
“We perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Analysis is more likely to adjust evidence than to adjust itself.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a tree from its seed, or of a fowl from its egg, evolution excludes creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)