our inner lawyer :]

Okay so this chapter was a little confusing with all of its scientific talk, but I found it quite intriguing that the same lumps and arches that form our entire head are the same arches that can be found in sharks and other fish and mammals. I liked how the seemingly pointless complexity of our brain and the nerves that it encompasses is actually derived from our fishy ancestors. As an embryo our arches are almost identical to that of a shark's, and what this tells us about ourselves is that along the path of evolution all of our "hard wire" got jumbled up and confusing, but these wires still carry out the same simple tasks that they were intended to. I really like how Shubin made the comparison of the wiring in his old college, because I was able to finally understand what he meant about how all of the nerves that are found in our head twist about in confusing ways. This is because when we kept adapting the nerves that developed had to find new paths to twist around. Again Shubin enforces his theme that we humans came from somewhere, and that somewhere can be traced back millions of years to fish and how their primitive versions of the vertebra and the head developed to the extremely complex head we have today. I really enjoyed how he tied ancient worms into this chapter, because for me worms would be the last organism I could think of that shares similar structures of the body with myself. It was an eye-opener, and I definitely enjoyed learning about how the arches in our embryonic states develop some of the most important organs and tissues that we humans take for granted.