You want to click "Your Inner Fish". The videos are very interesting and very well done. It explains the "350 million years of evolution to produce the amazing machine we call the human body".

Your Inner Fish

In the News: Your Inner Fish – A Scientific Adventure



National Academy of Sciences

Have you ever wondered why people look the way they do? Why our hands and feet have five digits instead of six? Why we stand on two legs instead of four? It took 350 million years of evolution to produce the amazing machine we call the human body and in Your Inner Fish, a three-part series based on the best-selling book of the same name, author and evolutionary biologist Dr. Neil Shubin looks into the past to answer these and other questions.

Follow that adventure now on PBS

Darwin's Insights Continue to Inspire the Academy's Work

The ideas of Charles Darwin and the concept of evolution by natural selection continue to have a profound influence on modern biology – they permeate almost every area of scientific exploration. The Academies have long been involved in educational activities and publications on many aspects of evolution. For example, in 2008 the Academies published Science, Evolution, and Creationism, to help people who are interested in evolution better understand its underlying principles and how evolution is an integral component of scientific research and thinking.

In 2009 the National Academy of Sciences joined many other organizations in the international scientific community to celebrate the 'Year of Science,' which commemorated Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his masterwork On the Origin of Species. Information about some of the events we hosted as part of this celebration can be accessed through our event archive.

In 2010, the National Academy of Sciences awarded its most prestigious award, the Public Welfare Medal, to Dr. Eugenie Scott, Director of the National Center for Science Education, for her distinguished work to "…improve public understanding of both the nature of science and the science of evolution” (from comments by Dr. Ralph Cicerone, President, National Academy of Sciences during the presentation of the Public Welfare Medal).

In 2011, the Academies organized a convocation to bring together people from the life sciences community to explore ways to infuse concepts of evolution into all areas of biology education. Thinking Evolutionarily: Evolution Education Across the Life Sciences (2012) explains the major themes that recurred throughout the convocation held in Washington, D.C. They include the structure and content of curricula, the processes of teaching and learning about evolution, the tensions that can arise in the classroom, and the target audiences for evolution education. Videos from plenary sessions, interviews with participants, and resources from the convocation that led to this report may be accessed here.

In 2012 the Academies also released the report A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas as a first step toward developing the next generation of K-12 science education standards. The study of evolution is one of the themes running throughout this report with section LS4 focusing specifically on biological evolution. The Next Generation Science Standards were published in April 2013.

Research about evolution also has served as the basis for technical reports and research conferences that have been hosted by the National Academy of Sciences in past years. They include:

2008

Biogeography, Changing Climates and Niche Evolution

In the Light of Evolution, Volume II: Biodiversity and Extinction

Origin and Evolution of Earth: Research Questions for a Changing Planet

2009

In the Light of Evolution: Two Centuries of Darwin

Evolution in Health and Medicine

In the Light of Evolution: The Human Condition

Microbial Evolution and Co-Adaptation: A Tribute to the Life and Scientific

Legacies of Joshua Lederberg

2010

Understanding Climate's Influence on Human Evolution

2011

In the Light of Evolution: Cooperation

2012

In the Light of Evolution: Brain and Behavior

The Social Biology of Microbial Communities: Workshop Summary

National Summit on Strategies to Manage Herbicide-Resistant Weeds: Proceedings of a Symposium

The Human Microbiome, Diet, and Health: Workshop Summary

2013

In the Light of Evolution: Human Mental Machinery


Have you ever wondered why the human body looks the way it does? Why our hands have five fingers instead of six? Why we walk on two legs instead of four?

It took more than 350 million years for the human body to take shape. How did it become the complicated, quirky, amazing machine it is today?

Your Inner Fish delves deep into the past to answer these questions. The three-part series, which premiered April 9. 2014, reveals a startling truth: Hidden within the human body is a story of life on Earth.

That's because the evolution of humans can be traced into the distant past, to the earliest forms of vertebrate life on land and even to the earliest forms of life on Earth. Each of us carries the genetic imprint of creatures that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. From them, we inherited our most remarkable features — as well as quirks like bad backs and hernias.

The series is full of revelations that will surprise many viewers. Among the key insights: Our hands evolved from the fins of prehistoric fish. Our skin, hair and teeth can be traced to early reptiles. And our remarkable color vision is a legacy from ancient primates.

Based on a best-selling book by paleobiologist Neil Shubin, this scientific adventure story takes viewers from Ethiopia to the Arctic Circle on a hunt for the many ways that our animal ancestors shaped our anatomical destiny. Shubin has spent much of his life studying our ancient ancestors — searching for the deep pedigree of Homo sapiens. Using both the fossil record and DNA evidence, he traces various parts of our body's structure to creatures that lived long, long ago. Along the way, he makes it clear that we can thank our fishy origins for many human characteristics.

Endowed not just with scientific expertise, but also with natural wit and a talent for storytelling, Shubin puts all these discoveries in context. He travels from fossil-hunting expeditions in the Arctic to the deserts of Ethiopia and to the high plains of South Africa. And he reveals insights from scientists who have identified genes that we still have in common with distant forebears. He weaves together this information from past and present to demonstrate that we humans have a lot more in common than you might think with monkeys, reptiles and even fish.

The series is both an epic saga and a modern-day detective story — by turns surprising, funny and deeply profound. Come face-to-face with your "inner fish" in this completely new take on the human body. After seeing the world through Neil Shubin's eyes, you'll never look at yourself in quite the same way again!