Scent, Vision, Ears and The Meaning of it All
This chapter “Making Scents” is about the structure of our nose and how we use it to smell.Neil also talks about water-to-land transition for smell with Buck and Axel’s assumption. According to the process, they found out a jawless fish has fewer odor genes than mammals or other animals so they could have guessed those cells duplicated and become modern mammals and animals. This connects us to our inner fish even further then I could have thought.
Vision evolved as we needed better vision to get away from prey and view our food.Neil show us that if we look back at our history we can see that our vision arose 55 million years ago. Even though there are many different types of eyes all have the same start trigger.Humans have very detailed color vision that relies on three different kind of lights. Most other mammals only have two kinds of light receptors which makes them not discriminate as many colors as we can. We can trace the history of our eyes by tracing the history of our eye receptors. Our eyes are a way to trace where we came from and through similarities we can see who we evolved from.
In this chapter Neil talks of everything about the ear as title says it would. Neil tells of the three parts of the ear, the exterior, middle and inner. The middle ear in mammals is made up of three little bones: the stapes, malleus and incus. Neil then goes on to explain how the malleus and incus actually developed from the jaw bones of reptiles. And this is why mammals have three bones in their middle ear and other animals either have one or none. Neil constantly connects it to other species and animals showing us to be quiet similar.Lastly, the Pax 2 gene is what tends ear development. Neil explains that box jellyfish have the pax 2 and pax 6 (eye development) genes which creates a eye/ear organ. He uses this to show that just as our eyes are connected to our ears, so are a box jellyfish's’ and that can be used to show that we are related to them. Therefore continuing the connection to our inner fish.
This chapter was not really a summary of everything that the book has discussed in previous chapters, but it did use a lot of the knowledge from previous parts to create a final understanding. Neil talked of the "Theory of Everything," that everything has parents, this is important because it shows us that there's a reason that a creature looks a certain way. In this way we can trace certain traits to their origin and in that way some organisms connect to others.Neil goes through and creates a visual picture to show how all main parts of the body discussed in the book are connected, and lead to us.It was interesting to see how everything is completely connected.I also appreciated how he would connect a memory of his into the chapter, and show why it connected into the topic of the chapter. It showed us his personal experience and his reaction to his own findings. Neil is a wonderful writer and he taught me many things. I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone.
This chapter “Making Scents” is about the structure of our nose and how we use it to smell.Neil also talks about water-to-land transition for smell with Buck and Axel’s assumption. According to the process, they found out a jawless fish has fewer odor genes than mammals or other animals so they could have guessed those cells duplicated and become modern mammals and animals. This connects us to our inner fish even further then I could have thought.
Vision evolved as we needed better vision to get away from prey and view our food.Neil show us that if we look back at our history we can see that our vision arose 55 million years ago. Even though there are many different types of eyes all have the same start trigger.Humans have very detailed color vision that relies on three different kind of lights. Most other mammals only have two kinds of light receptors which makes them not discriminate as many colors as we can. We can trace the history of our eyes by tracing the history of our eye receptors. Our eyes are a way to trace where we came from and through similarities we can see who we evolved from.
In this chapter Neil talks of everything about the ear as title says it would. Neil tells of the three parts of the ear, the exterior, middle and inner. The middle ear in mammals is made up of three little bones: the stapes, malleus and incus. Neil then goes on to explain how the malleus and incus actually developed from the jaw bones of reptiles. And this is why mammals have three bones in their middle ear and other animals either have one or none. Neil constantly connects it to other species and animals showing us to be quiet similar.Lastly, the Pax 2 gene is what tends ear development. Neil explains that box jellyfish have the pax 2 and pax 6 (eye development) genes which creates a eye/ear organ. He uses this to show that just as our eyes are connected to our ears, so are a box jellyfish's’ and that can be used to show that we are related to them. Therefore continuing the connection to our inner fish.
This chapter was not really a summary of everything that the book has discussed in previous chapters, but it did use a lot of the knowledge from previous parts to create a final understanding. Neil talked of the "Theory of Everything," that everything has parents, this is important because it shows us that there's a reason that a creature looks a certain way. In this way we can trace certain traits to their origin and in that way some organisms connect to others.Neil goes through and creates a visual picture to show how all main parts of the body discussed in the book are connected, and lead to us.It was interesting to see how everything is completely connected.I also appreciated how he would connect a memory of his into the chapter, and show why it connected into the topic of the chapter. It showed us his personal experience and his reaction to his own findings. Neil is a wonderful writer and he taught me many things. I enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone.
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