Ch. 8-11

Ch. 8
I didn't know our nose could have such a profound impact on the way we perceive our world. Odors can elicit impulses in our brains. The smell of something may occasionally bring long buried feelings to the surface. The nose is also a very handy survival tool; the smell of tasty food tells us that we're hungry, the smell of sewage will make us feel ill, we are hardwired to avoid certain things because the smell is that bad. What really surprised me was the facts that fish also had the ability to smell inside a small cavity in the head. Living in the ocean, i would never find a reason or purpose for why fish would need the ability to smell anything.
Ch.9
Our eyes are one of our most useful parts of the body, it allows us to see. Our vision allows us to see where we are going, put things in the right places, or find something we are looking for. I can only imagine how hard it is for people who are blind or are colorblind. When you talk about an eye, you will think that the eye is the one who creates or sees the picture, but in reality the brain is the one processing what the eyes see and creates a picture. It is also interesting to note that our 2 tiny eyes are composed of about 70% of our sensory cells and the 30% are within our bodies.
Ch.10
This chapter described all the parts of the ears and explained the functions of the external, middle, and inner ears of organisms. What surprised me was when Shubin said there was fluid inside our ears that can tell us when our head is tilted. I wouldn't have known this because i absolutely hate when water or anything else gets into my ear after a day at the beach or at a swimming pool. When we drink too much alcohol, a substance called ethanol will diffuse into the fluid that's in our inner ear. When that happens, it stimulates our brain and tricks it, it believes we are moving when we are actually not. Ethanol will also extend the problem to our eyes, our brain thinks we spinning and it will pass along that information to our eye muscles as well. This chapter was a really interesting read.
Ch. 11
I was relieved to find that this was the last chapter of the book. This chapter summed up everything from all 10 chapters and put it into 1 organized chapter that was easy to understand and read. The bozo diagram helped me remember that we all received characteristics from a common ancestor and overtime, we developed different characteristics which lead to evolution. I will have probably forgotten most of this information by the time we talk about it again but i really hope not