Jim Bullock compares the development of cosmetic formulations to the natural evolution of the giraffe
The giraffe is a magnificent African herbivore which has evolved over millions of years to successfully fit an evolutionary niche. When it comes to making a living from those hard to reach leaves, there’s only one game in town and that’s Giraffa camelopardalis. But if you wanted to design a creature to rival the giraffe and tried to reverse engineer it, you’d find it has some curious features, in particular its left recurrent laryngeal nerve. This nerve connects the brain stem to the larynx so the distance should only need to be a matter of centimetres. In the giraffe however this nerve travels from the brainstem, down the neck, around the heart and back up the neck to the larynx, in all nearly five metres.[1] Of course the reason is because evolution happens in very many infinitesimal steps, generation by generation. Each individual little step ‘made sense’ at the time it happened but that detour of the laryngeal nerve around the heart which looked so insignificant in the giraffe’s (and our) prehistoric fish like ancestors now looks ridiculous in long necked modern mammals.
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