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.
No comments:
Post a Comment