#Neil shubin

[darthjess-book-reviews]

REVIEW: Your Inner Fish: a Journey Into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin

SUMMARY (Provided by Goodreads)

Why do we look the way we do? What does the human hand have in common with the wing of a fly? Are breasts, sweat glands, and scales connected in some way? To better understand the inner workings of our bodies and to trace the origins of many of today's most common diseases, we have to turn to unexpected sources: worms, flies, and even fish.

Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of anatomy who discovered Tiktaalik-the "missing link" that made headlines around the world in April 2006-tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of years, long before the first creatures walked the earth. By examining fossils and DNA, Shubin shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our head is organized like that of a long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genome look and function like those of worms and bacteria.

Shubin makes us see ourselves and our world in a completely new light. Your Inner Fish is science writing at its finest-enlightening, accessible, and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

MY REVIEW: 4/5 Stars

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin was an amazing chronicle about how bodies have evolved over time and how we can trace the human body plan back to that of fish. This book was utterly fascinating, and I loved how Shubin talked about his experiences as a paleontologist. I also thought it was so cool how the human predisposition for hernias as well as getting hiccups comes from our fish and amphibian ancestors.

The one thing I didn't like about this book was the outdated use of the word "primitive" when referring to animals in contrast to humans. While this book was published over ten years ago, more recent books about biology, anthropology, and nature make the point that all animals have been evolving just as long as humans and are built to fit well into their respective habitats. Everything alive today is no more or less "primitive" than everything else currently alive. I think that this book is very informative and very important for people wanting to understand evolution, however I do think it is important to keep my previous comment in mind, along with the fact that the use of the word "primitive" in reference to animals (and other humans) has lead to grave misunderstandings. Calling other creatures "primitive" allows people to justify hunting creatures to extinction and the destruction of whole ecosystems in exchange for human benefit. If you've read other biology books, his use of "primitive" can be easily dismissed (as it was for me) but I just think it could be misleading if you don't know much about the subject.

[preventthetoast]

I read Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin and one of the things that really stuck with me was the fact that they transplanted some genes from a fruit fly into a mouse, causing the mouse to grow FRUIT FLY EYES as well as normal ones. they seemed mostly not to function, but they could detect some light.

Ok so I'm taking a genetics class right now and in lab we've been given fruit flies with different mutations that we need to breed over the course of the semester.

Now, first thing I learned: fruit flies don't eat fruit. They eat yeast. They eat the yeast on fermenting fruit. They can not actually eat fruit. Their name is a lie.

Secondly, one of the two mutant lines I was given to cross are flies with the apterous mutation, aka they're wingless. I feel so bad for them, they can't do the one thing they're named for, they cant fly.

And then I realized. My fruit flies are in truth insects that eat yeast and can't fly.

Anyways, I've been calling them my yeast crawls and I am their god now.

[direquail]

pretty sure i’ve seen art of this before

[asexual-can-of-pringles]

I love scientists

[lilybug-02]

Hmm, fish facts aye?

What if we make a trade:

lol what in sus Disney side villans is my personality rn

How about a cat fact for a fish fact?

no pressure I just want to share my knowledge /gen

I sound so weird what am I doing-

*breaks character*

Hehehe did you know that cats have 32 muscles in each ear?

Cool right?

.

.

.

I have more if you want.

-A cat therian lol✨

Hmmm I can match ur stride. Have some evolution talk!

Fish gill structure directly correlates to bone and artery structure in all mammals (including humans)!

Dr. Neil Shubin seems really cool! He's gotten awards in discovering the origin of organs in the human body in relation to ancient fish!

[twelvebooksstuff]

I love this! Tiktaalik holds a special place in my heart and this is wonderful!

I don't know what I'm doing anymore lol. Getting back into paleo stuff. Tiktaalik feelings. I plan on making this into a small edition of 2 color screen prints on paper, so follow along to get notified for that! Photoshop // ~ 8 hours

Instagram // X // Bluesky

[catboybiologist]

could you explain why/if we can't just copy the genes of one animal and splice them into another animal, for example why we couldn't give humans cat ears?

There's no one easy way to answer this, but the basic answer is that it's not that simple. There's no one gene, or even easily reducible set of genes, that just is "make cat ears". Not only is there a network of genes activated within a cell, there are a myriad of signals from nearby cells (the "microenvironment") as well as cues from the rest of the body and environment.

So each one of the cells making your ear isn't just encoded to be a cell that makes your ear. In fact, most of them don't have any "ear" genetic characteristics or activation. They're generic cartilage or skin cells that were told to grow more or less by neighboring cells or distant cells during carefully coordinated times during growth and development. Each cell interprets this signal in different ways, and also receives multiple signals at a time, the combination of which can produce unique results.

The easiest to interpret example of this is finger development. During development, when your hand is still a fingerless paddle, a single cell on the pinky side of your hand (or thumb side, it could be reversed) releases a signalling molecules to nearby cells. A cell receiving the highest dose will start to become a pinky, and send a signal for the cells immediately around it to aide in that. The next cell that isn't aiding that, but still receives the initial signal, receives a lower concentration of that signal since it's further away. That lower concentration signals a ring finger, and it repeats until you get thumbs at the lowest concentrations.

That's the most visible example, but it's similar to what happens all over the body- signals that are dependent on the structure and genetics of the microenvironment, not just the genetics of the developing cells alone.

This careful network of timing, signals, gene activations, and spatial placement of cells is the core of the field of Developmental Biology (which, technically, my PhD is in as well bc it's often wrapped in with molecular bio lol).

So making cat ears on a human genetically would essentially require not only genetic manipulation, but also babysitting the fetus the entire time and adding in localized signals to the microenvironment of the developing ear cells, which is essentially impossible. There's too much "human" flying around to realistically get that result, and an attempt at doing so would essentially be akin to molecular sculpting. That's why *my* preferred approach would be epithelial stem cell manipulation/printing and subsequent grafting, but that's an entirely different thing.

If you're interested in this kind of thing, the most approachable and engaging summary of developmental biology is the book "Your Inner Fish", by Neil Shubin, the discoverer of Tiktaalik. He summarizes a lot of dev biology through the lens of evolutionary biology, which is a great way to see how differences in structures have arisen and differentiate across the tree of life.

If you want a shorter introduction, and like cute but kinda "cringey in the way you love" science parodies: the song evo-devo by a capella science is really fun and gets stuck in my head a lot:

But yeah, hope that answered your question!

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

I promise I'm not trying to gaslight you, but I do have a question on the whole "Birds are Reptiles" matter. I am not trying to say it's wrong, it's just something that genuinely confuses me on the matter. So, birds evolved from dinosaurs/reptiles, so they are dinosaurs/reptiles. But mammals also evolved from reptiles, reptiles evolved from amphibians and amphibians evolved from fish. Wouldn't that make every vertebrate a fish?

A) Mammals didn't evolve from reptiles! They evolved from other Synapsids, which is a completely separate group

B) we don't actually know if we evolved from "amphibians" ie the same group that all living amphibians are in. it's possible tetrapods - the group that includes living reptiles, amphibians, and mammals - had two divergences, with one line leading to amniotes (reptiles + mammals) and the other leading to living amphibians. Remember, all living things have undergone equivalent amounts of evolution over time. living amphibians are very uniquely adapted animals, and we do not know that the earliest tetrapods shared those adaptations. C) yeah, every vertebrate is a fish. or we get rid of the word fish. I vote for option a. there are a lot of things in our anatomies (read Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin) that are just, because we're fish.

[azspot]

Although polar regions only make up 8 percent of the total surface of the Earth, their influence is far greater than one might expect. “Almost 70 percent of all the planet’s fresh water is frozen in ice,” Shubin writes. “On land, permafrost in the polar regions holds 1,600 billion tons of carbon — roughly double that in the entire atmosphere today.”

[patrokleos]

I recommend the book Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin! He explores human anatomy through the evolution of various body parts from the earliest organisms to early fish to sharks and chickens.

He talks about how tadpoles switch between gills and lungs, and some of the things we do to stop hiccups (like expanding the abdomen, which we do by taking in and holding a deep breath) also trigger tadpoles to stop using their gills and go back to lungs.

I've got hiccups which is incredibly annoying but it does mean that every 4 seconds or so I'm reminded to think about fish evolution which is pretty cool.

[shopcat]

omg i miss doing these fank you mac

last song: wind by akeboshi

favourite colour: piiink and any warm brown colour 🩷🤎

last book: Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA by Neil Shubin. LOL

last movie: i think love actually ... i haven't watched any movies this year i'm fairly tv pilled lately

last tv show: oh my venus technically but i fell asleep to futurama last night so futurama really. it was the global warming episode #bender's turtle 🐢

sweet/spicy/savoury: SPICYYY though i do have a sweet tooth really. i'm about to make stir fried noodles w chorizo and hot sauce 4 din din but i often risk it all by wasting money on cheesecake

last thing i searched: the title of that damn book but besides that "hyunjin car accident" LMFAO i was curious... And yes he died

looking forward to: adopting another cat long term getting my pay short term Lol also mickey 17 (movie) and the skz fan meet next month 🤚

taggingggg @sevicia @steveharrington @hollowslantern @brettsgoldstein @isabelopaque @mesaryth and the girl reading this

[tiktaalic]

Guy who was a biology major voice. It’s easy to forget the layperson only has basic knowledge of sexy fossil finds and has probably only seen one episode of the pbs inner fish series. And is familiar with the name neil shubin and the years of work that preceded the actual find, of course. Of course.

[staringamassivemistakeintheface]

I just had a Thought about hybrid anatomy. Specifically gills, but it’s worth taking this line of (over)thinking elsewhere.

So, this May I had to do a review of Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin. It’s a really good book about our evolutionary history, and how different structures in our bodies emerged from our piscine ancestors. One of the things that I remember the best is how the gill arches (little lumps of tissue during embryonic development) form different structures in our faces and affect the paths of facial nerves.

So, if you want to include some fish hybrid/siren headcanons, how would their gills affect facial structure and expressions, how they talk and swallow? I know that nobody really cares about this level of detail, but realistic or semi-realistic anatomy always something I appreciate.

Also, while I’m on it. What is with the ear wings in avian designs? It makes no sense from a human or ornithological standpoint.

[catloverkid00]

I love Neil Shubin so much! please read Your Inner Fish if you can, it talks about his process for discovering Tiktaalik and also how being descendants of fish still impacts our bodies today!

words cannot sum up my love for neil shubin

[tignya]

I forgot I never did this one big oof. Thank you though @nsfwitchy2!!!!

Last Song I just played dnd 5e ballroom music for the game I just ran. Before that? Probably Fly Me To The Moon(Bayonetta version)

Fave Color Greeeeeeeen! 💚

Last Book I need to read Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin for class. I have to write a report by the 6th and have not yet started it because I hate myself apparently.

Last Movie Cannibal Holocaust a few months back. Not for the faint of heart. Or anyone, actually. It's very gruesome. Do not recommend unless you like horrifying movies that are so realistic the director got arrested, thinking the actors actually died to make it.

Last Show That's a hard one, I haven't watched actual shows in a while. If you count clips, Beastars. If not, I'd say probably The Owl House.

Sweet/Spicy/Savory Savory mostly, but I do like spicy stuff despite having no tolerance. Don't like overly sweet things, though.

Relationship Status Single and ready to never mingle

Last thing I Googled flumph

Current Obsession I've actually been pretty depressed lately so haven't had any new obsessions besides dnd and schoolwork 😅

Something I'm looking forward to I've got an awesome paid internship lined up for the summer I'm really excited for!! I'll be casting invasive plants and inverts in resin! Only issue is I have to go apartment hunting for the first time which I'm sure will not be fun...

[gloriousunderstanding]

Just wanted to rec Dr. Neil Shubin's book Your Inner Fish for anyone who wants a short, fun, easy-to-understand read on this particular topic. Also, Shubin is one of the guys who discovered Tiktaalik and he talks about that too.

WHY does the inner ear have a direct line to your stomach? What evolutionary advantage is there to throwing up when you're dizzy?