How many of you believe ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny?

Question

It is taught in many, many text books and at many universities and middle and high schools that a human baby has gill slits because it evolved from a fish. This is a lie that was made up in the 1800's and proved wrong in the 1800's. How many of you were taught this as evidence for evolution and how many of you believe this?

Answer 1

<<It is taught in many, many text books and at many universities and middle and high schools that a human baby has gill slits because it evolved from a fish.>>

Name one recent text book in which that's stated.  This should be easy to do if there are "many, many" of them.

Answer 2

in the first trimester some babies have slits that resemble gills but arent and i saw this in a text book once but it didnt really make an evoluton reference, i believe in evolution but im not particularly knowledgeable in the subject.

although, from what i know about life on earth, the first organisms were micrscopic ocean dwellers so maybe we did (billions of years ago) start out as fish-like organisms either way thast just my opinion.

Answer 3

The human embryo, like the embryos of other members of Phylum Chordata, has pharyngeal slits, not gill slits.  The pharyngeal slits develop into gills in the various orders of fish.  In the tetrapod orders, pharyngeal slits don't have as pronounced a function.  In humans, one set of pharyngeal slits contributes to the Eustachian tubes in the head, for example.

If students are taught that human embryos have gill slits, this is technically incorrect.  If students are taught that human embryos and fish embryos both have pharyngeal slits, then this is correct, and this is indeed evidence for common descent.  Embryology provides powerful evidence for this relatedness at the macroscopic, microscopic, and genetic levels.