What is the whole point?
Chapter 11 of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is the last chapter of the book. In this chapter, the author basically summarizes the whole book with that everything has parents. From us humans now to the small chemical bonds millions of years ago, though it may not be the same concept of a "parent", they all still had them. Nothing on this Earth just randomly appeared out of nowhere, everything evolved to what it is and will be. I thought in all it was a good way to end the book.
The most interesting part of this chapter I thought was the part where he explained hiccups and how they are actually part of our ancestry with fish. Even throughout this whole book, and years of learning about evolution in schools, its still hard for me to wrap my head around how something like a small fish in my aquarium slowly mutated and evolved so much overtime to basically become me. The information about hiccups just brings it all together, kind of pushing us back to reality from this space of genes and DNA and scientific names. This chapter connected most to Big Idea #1 definitely because it completely talks about evolution, summarizing the whole book. In all I really enjoyed it.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Sunday, March 17, 2013
YIF: Chapter 10 Review
How does the human ear provide information about our evolutionary history?
In Chapter 10 of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin, the author moves on from eyes to ears. The ear itself is a complex system and a couple decades before Darwin, another scientist discovered that the bones of the inner ear are very similar, if not the same, as the ones found in the jaw of reptiles. As the information is believable now, it wasn't back then especially without the introduction of evolution. But when embryos are studied throughout their different stages, it is shown that the slits in an embryo that form gills in a fish, specifically a shark, become the bones inside of an ear of a human being. The chapter also explained interesting information about the connection between the ear and how one keeps balance.
The most interesting part of this chapter was the section that discussed why one starts to stagger after getting drunk. I knew it happened, but I never knew the scientific reasoning behind it. It is because the alcohol from the bloodstream replaces the fluid in the inner ear, causing the brain to think that their is movement, when there really isn't. It's why you would feel dizzy. This chapter most closely relates to Big Idea #1 because it talks about the evolutionary history between fish and human beings.
In Chapter 10 of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin, the author moves on from eyes to ears. The ear itself is a complex system and a couple decades before Darwin, another scientist discovered that the bones of the inner ear are very similar, if not the same, as the ones found in the jaw of reptiles. As the information is believable now, it wasn't back then especially without the introduction of evolution. But when embryos are studied throughout their different stages, it is shown that the slits in an embryo that form gills in a fish, specifically a shark, become the bones inside of an ear of a human being. The chapter also explained interesting information about the connection between the ear and how one keeps balance.
The most interesting part of this chapter was the section that discussed why one starts to stagger after getting drunk. I knew it happened, but I never knew the scientific reasoning behind it. It is because the alcohol from the bloodstream replaces the fluid in the inner ear, causing the brain to think that their is movement, when there really isn't. It's why you would feel dizzy. This chapter most closely relates to Big Idea #1 because it talks about the evolutionary history between fish and human beings.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
YIF: Chapter 9 Review
Why is eyesight such a key and simple, yet diverse, feature on animals?
Chapter 9 of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin moves onto another key feature of the face, from the nose to the eye. The eye has always been a organ of wonders, the way we see things and how different animals do not see colors as clearly as us humans. The way the human eye worked had been long discovered and understood by scientists and researchers, the way it reacts and absorbs light to give us sight. Though all organisms have a light absorbing molecule called opsins, only a few organisms, the ones closely related to human beings, have the three genes for color vision, required for seeing a large range of color.
The most interesting part of this chapter was that eyes have a gene that can be turned on and off. Scientists took this gene in fruit flies and moved it around to different spots of the body, and saw that when the gene was turned on in that specific place, an eye would grow. I found that to be really cool, but quite creepy when actually thinking about it. This chapter is mostly related to Big Idea #1 because it talks about evolution and how the worm found in 2001 had the vision system of both invertebrates and vertebrates.
Chapter 9 of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin moves onto another key feature of the face, from the nose to the eye. The eye has always been a organ of wonders, the way we see things and how different animals do not see colors as clearly as us humans. The way the human eye worked had been long discovered and understood by scientists and researchers, the way it reacts and absorbs light to give us sight. Though all organisms have a light absorbing molecule called opsins, only a few organisms, the ones closely related to human beings, have the three genes for color vision, required for seeing a large range of color.
The most interesting part of this chapter was that eyes have a gene that can be turned on and off. Scientists took this gene in fruit flies and moved it around to different spots of the body, and saw that when the gene was turned on in that specific place, an eye would grow. I found that to be really cool, but quite creepy when actually thinking about it. This chapter is mostly related to Big Idea #1 because it talks about evolution and how the worm found in 2001 had the vision system of both invertebrates and vertebrates.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
YIF: Chapter 8 Review
March 3 2013, 9:34 PM
How can our senses of smell lead to understanding our evolutionary history better?
Chapter 8 of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin begins the discussions of the senses. This chapter is about the sense of smell. The sense of smell, as many don't know, can provide great knowledge about the history of mankind. Our genome has 3% of its genes dedicated to the sense of smell. This is connected to evolution because we cannot detect many scents anymore because many of the genes for those have stopped working due to mutations. This didn't only happen in humans though, it's happened in similar animals too, due to the same mutations. This shows a clear connection.
The most interesting part of this chapter was that something as small as the sense of smell can constitute a part of the large story of life. I would've never have thought that something like the sense of smell could tell you about evolution. This chapter most closely related to Big Idea #1 because it talks about the evolution of animals. An example is of how the human sense of smell has lost a few scents, but so have other similar animals, showing we might've come from the same ancestor.
YIF: Chapter 7 Review
What was our true ancestor?
Chapter 7 of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin talks about the process of single celled organisms to multi-cellular organisms like us humans. As the chapters go along they are progressively getting more and more complicated and complex. Science shows that we all had one common ancestor that, way back in ancient history, was a single celled organism. Most of Earth's history was made up of single-celled organisms. Over time though, through evolutionary processes, bodies started to form, multi-cellular bodies. Today, if a cell is taken out of our bodies (depending on which cells) our life could quite possibly be at stake. In multi-cellular processes, the cells do not act alone anymore but instead rely on each other to survive. In single celled organisms, this was not the case.
The most interesting part of this chapter was that multi-cellular bodies first appeared, at least in fossil records, a little more than 500 million years ago. This was especially interesting to me because that, in the scope of Earth's history, is not very long at all and to think that it only took 500 million years to have a single-celled organism to become what we are now is amazing and hard to wrap my mind around. This chapter, like many of the other chapters in this book, relates most closely to Big Idea #1 because it has to do with evolutionary aspects and talks about the growth and process of a single celled organism becoming a multi-celled organism over time.
YIF: Chapter 6 Review
February 17 2013, 6:45 PM
How are the layouts of our bodies related to different animals'?
Chapter 6 of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is about the layout of the body. He talked about how all tetrapods have one head, four limbs, and a tail. This chapter mainly talks about how specifically a group of cells can become complex organisms such as humans or birds. It explains how the cells will first form a tunnel sort, with buds representing different parts of the body. This part seemed similar between different animal's embryos. He then talked about the next developing stages of the body and about different experiments that scientists did on embryos to fully understand why our body's layout is the way it is.
The most interesting part of this chapter was that the same parts of the cell layer form the same body parts in every animal. That was very interesting to me because of the uniformity, even when species can be so different. It shows that we all had one ancestor. This chapter connected most to Big Idea #1 because it talked about evolution and the chapters information gives even more evidence to the theory that we all came from one common ancestor. All tetrapods sharing the physical characteristics of having 4 limbs, one head, and one tail is also a clue.
YIF: Chapter 5 Review
February 10 2013, 2:00 PM
How can the shapes of our heads tell us what other animals we are like?
Chapter 5 of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is about heads and their relation to evolution and what they can tell us about our "inner fish". He goes on to explain the anatomy of the head, how it is made up of different parts, plates, blocks, and rods. From explaining these parts, Shubin transitioned to talking about embryos and how, interestingly, the parts of the embryo that form a human head are the same of those of a shark and really any other vertebrate animal, composed of 4 arches. Shubin explained what each of the arches are for, what parts of the body they would soon develop to be. This chapter helps explain the evolutionary history of the human body by showing the fact that all vertebrate animals share the same 4 arches in the embryo, a clear sign that we all have the same ancestor.
I thought the most interesting part of this chapter was that the parts of the embryo that form a human head are the same of those of a shark. I never would've expected this due to the large physical differences between sharks and human beings, from the surface it seems that we don't have practically anything in common. But I know from reading this book that we actually share a lot more than apparent. It is very significant that it happens to be a shark that the embryo looks like as we are on a quest to find our "inner fish". This chapter relates to Big Idea #1 because it is completely talking about evolutionary history and gives evidence to how we all must've come from the same ancestor by giving examples of the embryo head.
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