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Richard Dawkins demonstrates laryngeal nerve of the giraffe

MysOxen

303 subscribers • 1 video on Rounds

YouTube
  • Recommended by 1 person, in Hacker News.
  • Presented by Richard Dawkins, as the video describes them

For anyone, no background needed. Education, not medical advice.

612K views16 years ago1 recommendation

How the body worksAnatomyPhysiology

Richard Dawkins participates in a giraffe dissection to demonstrate how the recurrent laryngeal nerve's detour is evidence of evolutionary history.

©Channel4 From "Inside Nature's giants" channel4.com/programmes/inside-natures-giants/4od#3072424 Richard Dawkins demonstrates laryngeal nerve of the giraffe.

Why it's here

1 person recommends this

What people say. Recommended as a memorable and clear demonstration of evolutionary design flaws and local maxima in biology.

ufoin Hacker News • Recommends

On “If I could dissect a sauropod”

The blog post recommended the TV show "inside nature's giants", and I second it. The bit about the recurrent laryngeal nerve of the giraffe is particulary memorable: link to this video

ChrisNorstromin Hacker News • Mentions

On “Desktop App for All Your Email”

A rule of thumb is not a law. Form doesn't always follow function even in nature and evolution: link to this video Also styles and fads like "minimalism" and "flat design" are forms that do not follow function but are really forms that enforce function. Which is why they're fads and go away after enough people jump on the bandwagon and realize the fad's flaw and limitations.

adevinein Hacker News • Mentions

On “New finding: 600M years ago, a single mutation changed everything”

Evolution most certainly DOES get stuck in local maxima: link to this video . Also, it's quite easy for me to imagine an animal like an angel, with arms and wings. Tetrapods only have 4 limbs to work with though. For bats to gain wings they had to lose their front legs.

fhoffain Hacker News • Mentions

On “Operation Rosehub – patching thousands of open-source projects”

Good catch. It seems like an artifact of working and editing a query until they got what they wanted - certainly not a BigQuery restriction. (like this link to this video ) Note that the published query scans 2.25 TB of data. While impressive, for a better workflow and cost management I would split it into a 2 step process: - First extract all the files I'm interested in to a separate table (all pom.xmls?). - Then run whatever analysis you want over those files.

Recurrent laryngeal nerveon WikipediaMentions

Linked from the Wikipedia article "Recurrent laryngeal nerve" (WikiProject Anatomy).