Neil Shubin Your Inner Fish Summary

Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases; we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish. In Your Inner Fish, Neil Shubin clears up the questions previously asked. He tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth. For example, by examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria. In only 201 pages and 11 chapters, Shubin gets his point across easy. Chapter 1 mentions how common descent and how fossil records are intertwined. Shubin gets his point across with using the example of the creature the tiktaalik. The tiktaalik is the earliest living thing with a neck, meaning that it can turn its head and look around independently of its body. It also has a limb structure that is just like humans, horses, and everything else. This is a pure example of common descent. In evolutionary biology, a …show more content…
We can trace the developmental history of our vision and our ears all the way back to bacteria, and gill arches in fish. The gene Pax6, meaning eyeless, was discovered in mice and fruit flies. This gene could also be used to grow an eye in a fruit fly. This gene, one in a fly, one in a mouse, was so similar in both that either of them can trigger the complex developmental cascade that results in the formation of an eye. As for ears, they trace back to gill arches of fish, developing into parts that “hook” onto the jaw, and connect nerves to the brain. This is why so many human birth defects affect both eyes and