I Sing the Body Aquatic

[spectralbovine]

I cannot remember who recommended the book or why I bought it, but I've just finished Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, by Neil Shubin. Neil Shubin co-discovered Tiktaalik, the "fish with hands" (yeah, we already knew they existed, io9), in 2004. This creature represents an intermediate between aquatic

Comments

[musesfool]

That sounds like an awesome book! I will have to add it to my to.read list.

[spectralbovine]

I have just crossed it off mine! Mine is very very long.

[robyn_migratori]

Oh, excellent. This book came up a lot when I took developmental biology and I meant to read it and forgot. Then it came up again when I took evolution, and again I meant to read it and forgot. But this time I will go to the library website straight away and request it, so thank you for reminding me of this book's existence!

[spectralbovine]

Ha ha ha ha. My pleasure! It would certainly come up in both developmental biology and evolution.

AWESOME ICON.

[robyn_migratori]

Oh, I felt the need to correct myself, having picked up the book from the library today and noticing the 2008 publishing date: I must not have heard about the book in those courses (taken in 2006 and 2007), but rather just about Shubin and Tiktaalik. My bad. Still: thanks for the rec. I know I'd been meaning to read the book for some reason.

[spectralbovine]

Tell me what it explains, Nicole. TELL ME WHAT IT EXPLAINS.

[the_narration]

I read this a year or two ago. (Did I recommend it to you?) Really interesting book, full of all sorts of fascinating information. You can recognize the basics of body design throughout the animal kingdom and track their slow change due to evolution. Watching limbs go from fin to claw to paw to hand, all while retaining the basic structure... it's amazing.

We develop features when we need them, and no earlier.
Not precisely. It's more like "new features become prevalent and widespread when they become advantageous enough to increase the chances of those with the new features surviving and reproducing over those without, and no earlier." Evolution isn't an intelligent or sentient agency, but the result of random mutations which prove favorable having a better chance to propogate themselves.

[spectralbovine]

I read this a year or two ago. (Did I recommend it to you?)
I don't think so.

"new features become prevalent and widespread when they become advantageous enough to increase the chances of those with the new features surviving and reproducing over those without, and no earlier."
That's not glib enough for me, man!

[the_narration]

That's not glib enough for me, man!
Science cares not for your glibness! Information must be accurate... FOR SCIENCE! *trumpets play*

(Seriously, tho. One of the big reasons most people don't understand how evolution works is that they keep wanting to treat it like it's something alive that deliberately adds new features in response to the environment, instead of the result of blind processes.)

[equustel]

The reason we get hiccups is because we're related to fish and tadpoles.

Oh boy, now I have something to blame! I get them without fail whenever I laugh too hard. (Which is often.) It is obnoxious, although I am a master at getting rid of them.

[spectralbovine]

Tadpoles basically breathe by hiccuping. And you can stop them by, you guessed it, having them breathe carbon dioxide. Science!