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Richard Dawkins demonstrates laryngeal nerve of the giraffe

MysOxen1 HN recommenders · 2012–2024
612K views · documentary · evergreen · Uploaded 2010-06-14

A clip from Channel 4's Inside Nature's Giants in which Richard Dawkins shows the recurrent laryngeal nerve of the giraffe during a dissection. The nerve takes a long detour down the neck and back up.

HN uses it as the canonical example that evolution is not optimal and can get stuck in local maxima.

Evolution & geneticsAnimals & nature

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4 comments from Hacker News

@ChrisNorstrom2012 · in “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: [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.

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@adevine2016 · in “New finding: 600M years ago, a single mutation changed everything”

Evolution most certainly DOES get stuck in local maxima: [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.

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@fhoffa2017 · in “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 [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.

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@ufo2024 · in “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: [VIDEO]

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