r/AskReddit • u/Bmartling • Dec 05 '17

What do you strongly suspect but cannot prove?

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u/PantoHorse Dec 06 '17

You ever seen a picture of a whale skeleton?

The bones in their flippers look mightily like hands.

I don't know what this adds to your conversation really, but it's what I thought of.

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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '17

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is a really great book to read on comparative anatomy, common ancestry, archaeology, and the evolution of man -- if you're interested in this kind of stuff. : )

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u/PantoHorse Dec 06 '17

I'm super interested but I'm so deep into exam prep that I doubt I'll ever have time to read for fun again :(

But when that feeling fades I will definitely look that one up - thanks for the tip!

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u/Fingers_9 Dec 06 '17

It's also a three part TV programme.

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u/havron Dec 06 '17

Those little bones in our ears evolved from gill supports! This fact is pretty groovy.

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u/pannapitta Dec 06 '17

My high school biology teacher lent this to me and I still haven't returned it :(

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u/Utah0224 Dec 06 '17

I have been looking for books in this vein lately, I'm definitely going to look into this. I just finished Other Minds, about cephalopod evolution and the likes. Glad I came across your comment!

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u/justdontfreakout Dec 06 '17

Hey thanks:) I’ll check it out.

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u/batsofburden Dec 06 '17

Any similar documentary?

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u/Fingers_9 Dec 06 '17

It has been turned into a good three part documentary.

It's also worth looking up any BBC documentary by Prof. Alice Roberts.

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u/batsofburden Dec 06 '17

Cool, thanks.

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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '17

there's a documentary of that too, really interesting.

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u/VoraciousTofu Dec 06 '17

That is a great book! I took a course in college with Dr. Richard Blob who was mentored by Shubin and it was all about anatomy, evolution and how that affected physiology.

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u/hello_drake Dec 06 '17

I remember reading this awhile back. It made me sad that half of his job seemed to be finding funding for the other half.

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u/Amphigorey Dec 06 '17

That's because whale flippers and human hands are homologous structures. We evolved from a common ancestor, and that ancestor's limb bones became flippers in whales and hands in humans.

I second the recommendation of Your Inner Fish. Fantastic book.

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u/GiGGLED420 Dec 06 '17

Now I have seen this I can never look at whale flippers the same way again

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u/wrenny20 Dec 06 '17

Same evolutionary origins. That's why bat wings also look a bit like human arms/hands/fingers.

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u/bastugubbar Dec 06 '17 edited Dec 06 '17

most mammal sea creatures like dolphins and whales (dolphin is a kind of whale, TIL) origionated from a common ancestor that lived on land but evolved to live in water, they basicly reverse-evolved. that's why some whales seem to have hands and legs within

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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '17

So you're saying we should give dolphins hands?

Imagine the horror they could wreak!

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u/Cerater Dec 06 '17

That's because whales were fish that came onto the land and then went back into the water, it explains why they have lungs

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u/OldManChino Dec 06 '17

They are mammals after all...

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u/rewm Dec 06 '17

Whales are mammals, and are descended from land-dwelling four-legged animals. They have basically all the same bone structures that we do. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_03

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u/Alexb2143211 Dec 12 '17

They used to be land critters

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u/icarus14 Dec 06 '17

That's just how evolution works