What surprised me was how the three germ layers that Mr. Shubin introduces are the basic foundations for the growth and development of almost every animal--or I guess all of them. As I was reading, especially about the formation of the tubes after conception--particularly the tube inside the tube part--I was thinking, "Man, I wish the dude would put up pictures of this tube 'cause this is seriously confusing." To my surprise, the picture was on the next page. Talk about convenience! Then I realized that the tube in the tube is our digestive tract and how there's just a tube that runs down through our body. Until then, I was thinking that we were just a small chunk of cells. I would have never guessed right away that we become tubed-tubes.
The way that flies' genes and our genes are parallel and so similar makes me wonder what would happen if we played around with our genes to make us end up having legs coming out of our heads. But that would be cruel, and I'm sure flies would think of us as cruel, too. hahaha.
The turning on/off of the genes is quite the clever contraption. It's an ingenious "thing" that makes our bodies so ideal.
In the Anemone section, is Mr. Shubin saying that sea anemones aren't as developed as we have? That we, as we were anemones, have gone major reconstruction, just as the nerve cables in our heads? And does Noggin just give embryos extra structure?
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