Analysis of Your Inner Fish Book

If I was an ordinary person with no particular interest in DNA, evolution, or nonfictional stories, I don’t think this would be a valuable book to read. While the book was chalk-full of interesting information, none of it seemed to really apply itself to everyday life. Especially if I wasn’t in a biology class, I can’t imagine a scenario in which I felt it necessary to know that the incus and malleus bones in our inner ear are actually our ancestors’ jaw bones. As I said; interesting fact, but is it really important to know? I think the only situation in which someone not taking some sort of a science class would find this book interesting is if they were having some existential crisis, or perhaps if they wanted to converse with their pet fish about all the fun things they have in common (in which case, a self-help book might be more beneficial). 

As an AP biology student, however, I did find this book to be a valuable read in terms of content. In our class, we talked about subjects that I was simultaneously learning about outside of school via this book. In particular, it was beneficial during our units that focused on DNA. In the beginning, it was difficult for me to realize that all cells in our bodies contain all of our DNA. It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but I wondered why, if they all have the same genetic makeup, our cells are so different from one another? I knew genes were expressed, but if all DNA was in all of our cells, wouldn’t all the genes also be expressed? What I found totally bridged this gap for me was Shubin discussing our sense of smell. One particular phrase rocked my world: “The genes involved in the sense of smell are present in all of our cells, although they are active only in the nasal area” (140). Such a simple example wouldn’t seem to cause such a revelation, but in my case I set the book down as I felt my brain finally click these pieces together. 

While this was definitely the most iconic connection I remember from reading the book, I remember jotting notes down as I was reading, and then discussing similar notes the very next day in class. Overall, there were a lot of similarities in the content of Your Inner Fish and my AP biology course, and I do feel it was valuable to read as a student.

While, as a student, I found it helpful to read, I honestly didn’t enjoy this book. I am not in AP biology at all times of the day, and when I’m not, I find it hard to apply the content found in the class-and in this book-to my life. I enjoy reading and biology as separate subjects, but bringing them together wasn’t as fun as I had imagined. When initially introduced, I understood this book to be “the story of Tiktaalik” which, in my mind, somehow meant a fictional retelling of Tiktaalik's life, with a whole personality and everything. I will admit that in hindsight, that wasn’t a very sophisticated guess, but I was only hoping. I might be a little biased because I have never found nonfiction books to be interesting, so perhaps if that’s up your alley you’ll find it more entertaining than I did.

When I was a little kid, I actually used to think paleontology was the coolest thing in the world (something I can attribute largely to the Jurassic Park series. Of course, that mostly meant dusting away a little sand and finding a huge dinosaur skeleton, which is realistically very little of the science. I remember how exciting it was digging in the dirt during recess and finding fossilized bits of coral, imagining they were little dinosaur bones. I remember asking my mom to bury my toys over and over again in a bin of small dried beans, then using a paintbrush to reveal what I knew would already be there but was still undeniably amusing. Due to this, I’d say my favorite chapter of the book was probably chapter one, Finding Your Inner Fish. In this chapter, Shubin recalled his time in the field actively searching for Tiktaalik, and it was written in a way that made me feel as though I was there looking for fossils with him. This chapter, while setting up the content for the book, also allowed readers to experience a little of what it was like when Shubin was physically digging in the dirt, just like I had as a child. I think that’s also one of the reasons I found this chapter particularly interesting because it was written in a way that appealed to my childish curiosity, but at the same time wasn’t so full of big words and new information that it was hard to follow. This chapter sort of re-sparked my interest in paleontology, and not just the kind where you find large dinosaur skulls. It taught me that just about any type of fossil can be valuable in discussing our evolution as a species. It taught me that in any fossil, there’s hundreds of different connections to everything currently living and everything that has lived. I never really appreciated the theory of evolution very much, because it just didn’t seem even the slightest bit reasonable that we had evolved from tiny fish in ancient oceans. This chapter is what began to change my perspective on paleontology as a science. 

The chapter that I felt was least interesting was chapter ten, Ears. A lot of the section was spent discussing the different structures and functions of the inner ear, which, not only is something I’m not even remotely curious about, but something I also just recently went over in Psychology class. It felt to me like I was reading my textbook again, but it was a lot less useful this time around because I already knew the information. One could argue that it’s interesting knowing where our ear bones come from, but Shubin acted like it was absolutely revolutionary to discover that some of them evolved from jaw bones in other species. When reading that section, I was thinking in my head “well, yeah…they had to come from somewhere, right? And your jaws are super close to your ears, so wouldn’t that make sense?”. The entire chapter just felt redundant and self-explanatory to me, so while I did confirm that our ear bones are ancient jaw and skull bones, it’s not as if I was given some groundbreaking information.

The easiest overall concept for me to grasp was the importance of Tiktaalik. In his book, Shubin details the discovery of both limbless and limbed fossils, but he emphasized several times that for centuries, global science has been missing the fossil that connected the two. While scientists around the world largely agreed in the evolutionary theory, there wasn’t concrete evidence to prove the evolution of limbless to limbed beings until Tiktaalik. 

The concept that I found most challenging was human evolution from jellyfish and even less complex organisms, such as microbodies. When it comes to mammalian creatures, I can make sense of the similarities between ourselves and them. I can even be convinced that organisms without limbs (such as fish) were our distant ancestors. What I really feel is too far of a stretch, however, is when we connect ourselves with beings so ancient that they didn’t even have bodies. It’s strange, because I can rationalize that humans might have evolved from fish, and that fish probably evolved from microbodies, but agreeing that humans evolved from microbodies is just something I find too difficult to do.