Throughout the chapter, Shubin's analogies like the one comparing cancers to bullies who break down highly cooperative societies made it easier to understand the text. I learned that a cancerous tumor is born when one batch of cells no longer cooperates with others and destroys the balance in the human body. Through this fact, I realized that communication within the body is extremely vital. For example, without the "glue between cells", our skin cannot be smooth because the cells have failed to maintain its integrity and the regularity of its surface. I thought it was also interesting how warts are produced when cells do not know when to stop growing, from miscommunication.
Furthermore, I was surprised that there were no bodies on Earth for extremely long periods of time (about 3/4 of Earth's history), only single-celled organisms as indicated by the chart on pg. 121. Then, later towards the end of the chapter, Shubin discussed how a cause for the origin of bodies was also in place: by a billion years ago, microbes had learned to eat each other. Since oxygen was a required element for bodies to survive, only after Earth's oxygen increased did bodies start to appear. This is a bit ridiculous, but it is an interesting theory of the origin of multi-cellular organisms.
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