Episodes

Episode 1: Your Inner Fish

How our limbs can be traced back to the fins of fish. According to Neil Shubin we are, every one of us, just a jerry-rigged fish.

Episode 2: Your Inner Reptile

How our skin, teeth and acute sense of hearing can be traced back to our reptilian ancestors.

Episode 3: Your Inner Monkey

How walking upright, gripping with our hands, and our excellent colour vision can be traced back to our primate ancestors.

The Series

Have you every 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? Scientist Neil Shubin has spent much of his life digging into our ancient past, to try to understand how our distant animal ancestors have shaped the human form. Using fossil evidence and our DNA history Neil traces back different parts of our body’s anatomy to animals that lived millions of years ago. Along the way he reveals that we can thank our fishy past for many of our body’s quirks – from hernias to hiccups.

With his natural wit and story-telling, Neil uses science to explore the origins of the human body. He travels from the high Arctic, to the deserts of Ethiopia to the high plains of South African search of the most important fossils. 

Meet the family you never knew you had.

Credits
Executive Producer (Tangled Bank)
Series Producer
Producer/Directors
Senior Producers (Tangled Bank)
Line Producer
Junior Production Manager
Junior Researcher
Edit Assistant
3 x 55' for PBS

Programme Information

Windfall Films/Tangled Bank Studios Co-Production