AFAIK it all boils down to the fact that during embryonal development our cells, which at that point were just a blob of undifferentiated autonomous chemical machines, somehow managed to unanimously agree upon the cardinal directions (up-down, left-right, front-back) for future development - and thanks to this, we don’t have toes growing out of our ears.
Too bad evolution is blind, and now our windpipes and digestive tracts cross over. It works, but it would have been nice if choking wasn’t a thing.
Other examples of interesting (sometimes called ‘unintelligent’) evolution might be how we walk upright, leading to complications with childbirth and back pain, blindspots because of our optical nerve, and or that recurrent nerve that does a random U-turn.
Evolution is basically millions of years of patches without ever getting a rebuild form the ground up. It’s mostly ok, but some bugs stick around
This is just based on an offhand comment from a lecturer during a practical session during my time studying animal management in college, not directly from a biology lecturer so citation needed, but apparently rabbits don’t have a combined windpipe/digestive tract and it means that a blocked nose can kill them. So even if choking wasn’t a thing we’d have to worry about something blocking our noses and suffocating us.
Oh that’s actually a good point, so there are upsides as well.
Movies would also look really silly when someone would get killed by having their nose pinched closed
We just walkin’ with a couple billion years of biotech debt in us.
Interestingly, the recurrent laryngeal nerve is looped around that way because the structure of the nerve grows in before the structures of the aorta and other large vessels fully grow in and orient into their correct position, so the nerve ends up looping around them.
I always thought that was a poor design. Aliens likely would find that disgusting.
What interests me is that I believe all warm blooded animals also share this trait. Not certain that is true but if so, wouldn’t that mean it evolved in a very early period?
Also what I find interesting is that the layout of humans to most animals is the same. A head with eyes then nose then mouth among with the brain behind it. Most of the organs are in similar locations. It seems strange that there would not be more variety.
That 85% of DNA that apparently does nothing? Commented out.