" A branch of one of the cranial nerves, the recurrent laryngeal runs from the brain to the larynx. It doesn’t go straight there, however. Instead, it dives down into the chest, loops around one of the main arteries leaving the heart, and proceeds back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe the detour is significant (British understatement) and it is presumably costly. The explanation lies in history, in the nerve’s emergence in our fish ancestors before a discernible neck evolved. "

― Richard Dawkins , Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science