Shark Chapter Summary

Chapter five opens up two days before Neil’s anatomy final with him studying the cranial nerves in the labs—shows a lot of initiative considering most students wait until the night before. Here, Neil made an important discovery; he learned that human nerves, in all their complexity, resemble “the state of affairs in shark” (Shubin 81). Then, of course, he realized where he was exactly and darted off. Unfortunately, he locked his house keys in the lab, and newly enlightened scientist, Neil Shubin, was also homeless for the night. Head anatomy is about as complicated as it gets. Neil breaks it down into two parts. First, we have the skull; the skull can further be broken down into three parts: plates, blocks and rods. The plates of the skull

Upon conception, a collection of cells form into a little glob. At the base of this glob, four arches form. Neil goes into detail about how each arch develops into specific structures. It does not stop there. This pattern of embryo development does not only apply to humans. Looking at the development of a shark, and we see structure development that mimics a human’s. Furthermore, if we take a look at the nervous system of the shark, and we see the same cranial blueprint we have. It’s amazing to see how similar we are to the predators of the sea; however, our ancestors do not stop here. In WORMS, we also find a little bit of ourselves, particularly the worm, Amphioxus. Although Amphioxus is an invertebrate, it surprisingly has a nerve cord that runs along its back, and in addition to the cord, the worm also has a rod that runs parallel to it called the notochord. Crazily, human embryos also have a notochord. “Your Inner Fish” is like an animalistic Ancestory.com, and the further we dive into its contents, the crazier the connections get. As Neil says, “the essences of our heads goes back to worms, organisms that do not even have a head” (Shubin 96). Personally, I knew the gist of evolution pre-read, but never did I imagine I would be related to a