Chapters 8-11

Chapter 8: Making Scents

In this chapter I thought it was pretty funny when he said that extracting DNA is so easy that it can be done in the kitchen. It was interesting to learn that using meat tenderizer breaks off some of the proteins that are attatched to the DNA. It amazed me of how we can decipher the history of our senses just from DNA. I never knew we could distinguish between 10,000 scents and how our brain can process them; I honestly didn't even know that there were that many scents, its crazy! The diagram of the nasal openings, made the reading more easy to understand and to see the different kinds of nasal openings for different animals.


Chapter 9: Vision

I think it was really cool how Shubin used the analogy of cars to the history of our eyes. By reading, I learned that our eyes have many tissues, and that our eyes are our own little cameras. He shows us that vision is very important to us and that in order to understand our eyes, we must understand the structures of our eyes. It was pretty amazing learning about aniridia, and about how others lacked big portions of their faces and their eyes. This chapter taught me alot about how important our vision is and the different structures and layers that our in our eyes.


Chapter 10: Ears

This chapter got me thinking about the inner ear, that controls the nerve impulses to the brain. I honestly thought that we had fluid in our ears because of when we shower or when we go swimming, but boy was I completely off. I was really surprised to find out that there is fluid in our ear is what signals our brain that our head is tilted. Now everytime I tilt my head I think about the fluid in my ears. ! I also never knew that alcohol affected our ears, i thought alcohol played a big factor to our livers, but Shubin says that the fluid in our ears begin to swirl and that makes our brain think that we are moving; and therefore, it causes us to be dizzy. This chapter out of the other chapters really interested me the most.!

Chapter 11 : The meaning of it all

In the last chapter, Shubin pretty much sums up the whole book. This chapter connects all the chapters together and basically completes the questions and thoughts I had about our body. It was interesting on how Shubin said that "every living thing on the planet had parents". I really enjoyed about reading the family trees and the descendants of our mothers and our fathers. This chapter had its funny parts, when he showed the family tree of "bozo" and how bozo descended from someone with a big nose and floppy feet. I was really amazed to learn that the top death of humans is not by accidents but due to our genetic basis. I always knew that humans were connected to animals, and that evolution has happened millions of years ago, but by reading Shubin's book, everything became real, and more clear to me. This book as a whole was really interesting and it taught me alot about our body! :)