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What Darwin Didn’t Know

The movie we watched in class was incredibly interesting the further we got along into it. I found that the most interesting part- though I had seen it in a few other movies- was when the went through the initial discoveries that Darwin made during his initial trip to the Galapagos Islands. Since it’s one of the most significant discoveries in science even now I find it fascinating that research he did so many years ago can still be relevant and valid today in the modern world. It’s amazing to me that Charles Darwin was able to notice that different variations of the same species on each of the islands were actually all basically the same animal but had simply adapted to the food it ate and the surroundings it was exposed to on a regular basis. Prior to watching this movie I knew about the Hox gene but I had never known what it specifically was. However, now I’ve learned that the Hox gene is the part of the embryo’s cells that is responsible for the body planning of the future child it will become and can be examined in a way that could be used to identify the cause of certain diseases. I would probably recommend this movie for use in other classes because of the amount of information and the diversity in the information it gives. It was able to efficiently cover a wide variety of topics in a single movie and in a way that didn’t make it seem disjointed and jumping all over the place.

 

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