Left Recurrent Nerve of a Giraffe

I learned something neat in anatomy today:

The left recurrent nerve branches off of the vagus nerve, which descends from the brain down through the neck towards the heart. After branching off, the left recurrent nerve ducks under the arch of the aorta and heads all the way back up the neck to the larynx. The result, is that this nerve forms a giant loop down the neck, and back again.

The consequence of this anatomical arrangement is that the longest nerve in the animal kingdom is the left recurrent nerve of…. the giraffe !