Chapter 8- 11

Chapter eight gave me something to think about. I never really thought that there would be smells in the water too. As a air breathing human, I never really realized that there would be fishes in the ocean that smell things in the sea just as we do in the air. It was also interesting to see that our fish ancestors had the same type of nostrils. When I began this book, it was bewildering to see that a fish would ever be similar to us. Afterwards I came to a conclusion that fish were our ancestors but they didn't have many similar characteristics with humans. However, this chapter made me dumbfounded because this chapter helped to clarify just how similar we are to our fish ancestors.
Chapter nine impacted me in a different way. The beginning was just regular explanations about how the eye works but I still found it interesting because vision was something I was born with and seeing how it was made possible just struck me that even the most seemingly simple body function has a lot of parts to it. However, the most shocking part of the chapter was the last few pages when Shubin mentions the gene that was essential for eye growth. I couldn't believe that when Gehring started swapping genes of a mouse and a fly, the mouse developed a fly eye. The eyes of the two organisms are completely different yet when Gehring tampered with the genes, the mouse suddenly had a fly eye.
In the same way chapter nine showed me that the eye is more complicated than it looks, chapter ten showed me that the ear is also more complicated than it looks. I knew there was our outer ear and inner ear but I didn't even imagine that there was a middle ear with three bones. I also thought it was interesting that the inner ear- eye connection could be interfered with by drinking a lot of alcohol. I always wondered why police would always check the eyes of someone who they suspect to be intoxicated. It turns out that it was because drinking alot of alcohol can cause nystagmus.
For me, the last chapter was just purely informative. I especially enjoyed the part where Shubin talks about hiccups. Hiccups were just a part of everyday life for me. However, there is also an explanation for why we get hiccups. It was interesting that other mammals other than humans get hiccups and that the root of hiccups come from "the history we share with fish and tadpoles."
Overall, this book made me think about alot of things differently because it contained things that I never even imagined could happen. I mean, who could have known that humans could have ever been related to fish? Because of this book, I will never look at fish the same way again.