Chapter 6: The Best-Laid (Body) Plans

Personally chapter 6 was incredibly interesting. When I began reading it was mind boggling on how the body is so complex but it all ended up making sense by the way Shubin had explained it. It was kind of crazy imaging that a fish's and an elephant's embryos are so similar even though the two are so different whey are fully grown. Also learning about the germ layers on page 99, which were the three layers of tissue that make up the organs of the chicken and a human made me think that we are so similar to so many different animals even though we don't look like them most of our insides are more similar than different. A apart in the chapter that really surprised me was when Shubin began talking about how files were important which made me realize that maybe i shouldn't be vigorously attacking them when they enter my home. I also didn't think that Shubin would have been able to compare humans to sea anemones but he did. I would have thought that since a sea anemone is so simple it would have no relation to a complex human being but Shubin was able to prove us wrong. One aspect that I love about this novel is that the diagrams usually don't confuse us, and end up helping us realize that what we are reading is what we are looking at. Also throughout this chapter as well as some of the other parts of the book I love the way that Shubin finds ways to compare us to different species such as fish, reptiles, etc. I look forward to keep reading more about how humans and other species are so similar yet so different.

-Neha Modha