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Swimmer963 comments on Rationality Quotes November 2013 - Less Wrong
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Natural selection also led us to breathe and eat through the same hole. Seriously???? This causes so many problems. Well, not enough problems for natural selection to change it, I guess.
Having two (three, technically) holes you can breath through has its advantages. Ever had a nasty head cold that clogs your sinuses so bad you can't breathe?
You still have just one pharynx, though.
Being able to smell what you're chewing is a huge advantage. I suppose achieving that some other way could get pretty convoluted.
I've read horses can only breathe through their noses.
I've never heard this, but I have read and just re-checked, and apparently whales and dolphins have separate passages for breathing (connected to their blowholes) and eating, and thus cannot choke on food.
It's all a matter of which fish we evolved from and what solution evolution came up with, in the development from that water-breathing creature to air breathers. It could have produced separate air and foodways, as it did for whales and dolphins. But the blind idiot has no foresight and it can't get there from here any more.
Dolphins and whales have the same fish ancestors we do; they're former terrestrial mammals who returned to the sea and share the same common ancestors of all mammals.