Chapter Six: The Best-Laid (Body) Plans

This chapter was difficult for me to read and stay focused. It again had a lot of detail, like Chapter Five, but it read like a textbook to me. The three layer concept was easy and I understood how all creatures started out with the three layers. And that those three layers all formed different structures, but the same in every species. Some paragraphs seemed out of place, like if our ball of cells develops in the wrong places, I just didn’t see why that had any significance in this chapter. The diagrams weren’t as helpful as they were last chapter; in fact, some of them even confused me more. I am amazed that one patch of tissue could create a body, and that this tissue can be placed in any species and it will show no effect to that species other than it has a twin. When Shubin began discussing the flies, I became lost; the only thing that really caught my attention was the mutations. That flies could grow to miss sections of their bodies or have limbs growing out of their heads. I am still in shock that sea anemone have similar structure cells like us.