Your Inner Fish

by

Neil Shubin

The four bulges in a vertebrate embryo that form the head and throat of the animal. These four arches coordinate with four complicated nerves in the adult animal, and are found to create the same structures in animals as different as fish and humans.

Arches Quotes in Your Inner Fish

The Your Inner Fish quotes below are all either spoken by Arches or refer to Arches. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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).
Chapter 5 Quotes

What I've just given you is one of the big tricks for understanding the most complicated cranial nerves and large portions of the head. When you think trigeminal nerve, think first arch. Facial nerve, second arch.

Related Characters: Neil Shubin (speaker)
Page Number: 87
Explanation and Analysis:
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Arches Term Timeline in Your Inner Fish

The timeline below shows where the term Arches appears in Your Inner Fish. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: Getting Ahead
History of Life  Theme Icon
Understanding Complex Concepts Through Simple Analogies Theme Icon
...blobs begin to form around the area that will be the throat. These blobs, called arches, will become different tissues for the head. Cells from the first arch become the upper... (full context)
History of Life  Theme Icon
Understanding Complex Concepts Through Simple Analogies Theme Icon
Looking at the arches provides a neat trick to understanding the cranial nerves. The trigeminal nerve serves all the... (full context)
Similarities Between All Animals Theme Icon
Understanding Complex Concepts Through Simple Analogies Theme Icon
Our Inner Shark. The arches of the human head look very similar to the gill slits of sharks and fish,... (full context)
Similarities Between All Animals Theme Icon
History of Life  Theme Icon
...Arch Genes. The first three weeks after conception are a very active time for the arches, with many genes turned on and off as brain tissue begins to develop and specific... (full context)
Chapter 10: Ears
Similarities Between All Animals Theme Icon
History of Life  Theme Icon
Understanding Complex Concepts Through Simple Analogies Theme Icon
Scientific Discovery Theme Icon
...that two of the ear bones (the malleus and the incus) develop from the first arch in the head and the third bone (the stapes) develops from the second arch. In... (full context)
Similarities Between All Animals Theme Icon
History of Life  Theme Icon
...the stapes. This tiny bone in the middle ear of mammals comes from the second arch, just like the huge bone in the upper jaw of fish and sharks. These two... (full context)
Chapter 11: The Meaning of It All
Similarities Between All Animals Theme Icon
History of Life  Theme Icon
...to deal with the hazards of choking and sleep apnea. Looking back to the gill arches from Chapter 5, the throat muscles that allow humans to talk are a modified version... (full context)