Chapter 6: The Best-Laid (Body) Plans

I really liked this chapter from its start. I was captivated from how he kept emphasizing the basic body structure while still marveling at each species' complex anatomy. All the experiments he described were incredible to me. For example, von Baer's experiments discovered that every animal organ originated from the three germ layers. I was a little bewildered at this; especially with all of Shubin's vivid descriptions of the complexity of our bodies in the previous chapters, I never would have thought that it was so basic. I did get a little lost, however, when he was describing the development of the human embryo, but his illustrations were both engaging and informative.
The thing about this that I found the most amazing throughout this chapter and maybe even this whole book so far was Shubin's connection of humans with sea anemones with the simple knowledge of symmetry. I always considered sea anemones and jellyfish to be blobs of animals, it amazed me that we could be even distinctly related!