#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The one thing I didn't like about this book was the outdated use of the word "primitive" when referring to animals in contrast to humans.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.

[punkgardener]

The cathedrals that construct frogs, birds, humans, all those ancient architectures that we herald as different and unique, theyre all the same under the light of the microscope and in the age old truth of the embryo

[endless-formsmostbeautiful]

Extinction for a scientist is irrelevance.

Some Assembly Required, Dr Neil Shubin

[direquail]

pretty sure i’ve seen art of this before

[dipnotski]

Neil Shubin – Canlılığın Tarihi (2023)

Yaşam ortaya çıktıktan sonra, bütün gezegen milyarlarca yıl boyunca mikrobiyal bir hayvanat bahçesi olarak varlığını sürdürdü. Önemli keşiflere imza atmış paleontolog Neil Shubin, yaşamın deneme yanılma, şans ve kaçınılmazlık, yön değişimleri, devrimler ve icatlarla dolu uzun, tuhaf ve harikulade yolculuğunu anlatıyor. Tüylerin hayvanlara uçmada, akciğerler ve bacakların da karada yaşamalarında…

[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

[gallium-spoon]

I just remembered that I was a full grown adult in college before I found out my mom doesn't believe in evolution. A few years ago I was telling my mom about a really cool book I was reading (Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin) and as I was talking my mom kinda goes 'hmm, I disagree' so I'm like ?? Huh? And she goes 'yeah I just don't think I could have come from a fish' and then I kinda short circuited but yeah turns out she doesn't really believe in evolution

Which is very much mind blowing to me because yeah my mom is pretty religious but she always encouraged my love of science and I had definitely talked to her about evolution before so she just waited until I was an adult to tell me shes a creationist I guess???

[asexual-can-of-pringles]

I love scientists

[t4tbruharvey]

stating for the record that if tiktaaliks ever pulled a coelacanth and i saw one in real life i wouldn't bash its head in with a rock even though i would really really want to

[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.

[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.

[markscherz]

Hii!!

Just wanted to ask if you have some authors recommendations for the topics of Herpetology, Biology or Ecology

Thanks!!

Jonathan Losos has put out some fantastic books that range from popular science (Improbable Destinies) to actual textbooks (Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree), and he is also the originator of island biogeography study in anoliid lizards of the Caribbean.

I really quite enjoyed Platypus by Ann Moyal. Great writing on a bizarre and fascinating subject.

Andrea Wulf's The Invention of Nature is simply fantastic science history biographic writing. It blew me away. I had never read anything like it before.

Regrettably, I have a longer list of authors in these genres that I did not enjoy (e.g. Robert Cowie, John Wright, Kate Jackson), and an even longer one I have not yet read but are on my to-read list (Harry Greene, Thor Hanson, Erica McAlister, Neil Shubin, Rachel Carson, Frans de Waal, etc.). Currently I am not making any headway on the latter list because I am currently working my way through all of the Discworld books in their order of publication. And I barely have/make any time for reading for pleasure anyway.

[soranatus]

Magnificent Mudskipper Eye-Volution Comic by Jordan Collver & the new research by Thomas Stewart, Brett R. Aiello, Simon Sponberg, Saad Bhamla, & Neil Shubin, on how/why whacky little fish called mudskippers blink & what it means for the evolution of life on land [insert "missing blink" pun].

[caesarsaladinn]

I read “names their kids after professors” and that would be fun

The reason it's so common to name your children after religious figures is to redirect any curses or magic to them, same with naming your kids after professions. (source: made it up)

who names their kids after professions. d'you know many people named Lawyer.

[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.