The purpose of the Animal Within activity was to present the evolutionary history of the human body, the characteristics of particular organs and to facilitate an understanding of their functions through a multi-sensory experience.
The evolution, form, functioning, even certain responses and behaviours of living beings are largely conditioned by their genomes, i.e. the gene sequences in their chromosomes. The diversity created by differences in genomes is key to the process of natural selection, which in turn powers microevolution and the emergence of new species. From the genomic point of view, human evolution did not start only seven million years ago (the age of the oldest known fossil hominid) but reaches much further into the geological past.
For example, hair, which covers the human body, appeared approximately 245 million years ago in a group of therapsids, long before the appearance of the first mammals. The structure of our arms is analogous to the limbs of the first terrestrial vertebrates living 360 million years ago, while the design of our jaw is found in the gill arches of fish living more than 450 million years ago. The physical properties defining humans are thus inherited and somewhat modified structures that may have originally served completely different purposes.
Coordinator: Petra Žvab Rožič, PhD, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering
