Girl your first arch is looking good!

I thought this was one of Shubin's most interesting chapters because he concentrated manly on the human anatomy rather than a fish's or a shark's. True, he did mention some parts of the anatomy of both and how human embryos are closely related to them but still he really made this chapter different. Instead of starting off with a Steve Irwin liked adventure out in an excavation ground he created the his environment to relate with us, the AP students.He talked about how he was stressing about his exam and how he was trying to memorize the different nerve cables in our head body, well everywhere. I thought that was a really good strategy in order to hook the reader into the book even more because as students we feel as though we are alone when we struggle with school but thanks to Shubin its nice to know that we are not the only ones who suffer. Well besides the connection with the audience this chapter, like every other chapter, was very informative. I never knew that during our embryo stages in life we resemble a shark. Also that we had four arches that somehow over time transformed into our tiny ear bones, jaw bones, etc. I thought that was amazing. Since our embryos look alike and Shubin stated that "we can manipulate the identity of the gill arches almost at will, by changing the activity of the genes inside" this makes me wonder, can we manipulate human arches into frog or shark arches? And if we did manipulate them would the baby still be able to function even with its deformities? This chapter also taught me that the human body has different cranial nerves with different functions. I thought that it was all one nerve. Its cool to know that if your facial nerve malfunctions it becomes evident through your face. Well overall, i disagree with most of the people who posted that this chapter was really confusing because i thought it was just interesting how small cable like structures rule over our life and body. I thought it was the best chapter so far. Well i probably think this because i love anatomy and i think i might major in it so this kind of helped me with info about our body.