Chapter 5: Getting Ahead

Seeing as I do tend to use my skull for a lot of things (such as banging it on a diving board while doing a back-flip when I was 7 or slamming it against a fence in baseball in an attempt to catch a long fly ball during Cypress All-Star season when I was 14), I found this chapter extremely interesting. I found it awesome how all these little muscles and elusive indents in your face could help you say a pick-up line to a girl at a party and then feel a hard slap in the face from her when the pick-up line is "Did you just fart? Because you completely just blew me away" (because really, whoever uses that pick-up line deserves a slap in the face).

I was never able to flare my nostrils, but when Shubin mentioned the muscle we used for that was the nasalis, I googled it right away. Discovering all these tiny little muscles in our face and finding out that each one has a sophisticated job was almost an overwhelming concept for me. How the heck could all those muscles even fit in a head? I guess the process of human growth really is amazing.

To top it off, I could not believe my eyes when Shubin mentioned our relationship to sharks and, let alone, WORMS. What?? How can we be related to something not even 1/32 of our size? Not to mention that worms don't even have heads! This chapter really helped clear that up for me, although I'm still in awe. That darn Amphioxus.

I learned numerous concepts from this chapter. Unfortunately, I still am unable to flare my nostrils, but I'm sure I will find some other muscle in my body that will help me do something subtle that others can't, like maybe something a worm can do..

Devin Larscheid