Chapter SEVEN

This chapter was interesting. I can't honestly say that this was that captivating, but it got pretty interesting by the midway point of the chapter. While Shubin starts talking about the human body and how all the individual cells are important in creating the body, he starts explaining Wilson's experiments on sponges. The question that rose to my head was, "What do we, human beings, have anything to do with sponges?". This was the question, but when I kept reading, it occurred to me that sponges are not like human beings at all, but better (in my opinion). Sponges, if cut in anyway, can just regrow the area that was cut off, like those monsters in movies that never die. Unlike sponges, humans don't have the ability to just regenerate the areas that have been hurt, therefore, we have to be more careful than ever because the slightest damage to anywhere on our bodies could change the body entirely. It also occurred to me that we have to thank our bodies more often. Without the skeleton, our bodies, as Shubin explained, would just be piles of goo. Without the skeleton, we humans wouldn't be able to walk, talk, chew food, or even sit up on a chair; we would just lay around going to waste on dry land and just float away in the water. Therefore, what I learned in this chapter is that everything in our body plays a vital role in every section of our body. Even the tiniest of cells play a major role in our body's function in everyday life. Therefore, any change to the body, even the smallest change, can make an enormous difference to the functions that human beings do in their everyday life.