( music? they did a great job! XD )It’s a Long Way from Amphioxus
chorus:
It's a long way from amphioxus
It's a long way to us…
It's a long way from amphioxus
To the meanest human cuss.
It's good-bye, fins and gill slits,
Hello, lungs and hair!
It's a long, long way from amphioxus,
But we all came from there!
A fish-like thing appeared among the annelids one day;
It hadn't any parapods or setae to display.
It hadn't any eyes or jaws, or ventral nervous chord,
But it had a lot of gill slits and it had a notochord.
(chorus)
It wasn't much to look at, and it scarce knew how to swim.
And Nereis was very sure it hadn't come from him.
The molluscs wouldn't own it, and the arthropods got sore,
So the poor thing had to burrow in the sand along the shore.
He burrowed in the sand before a crab could nip his tail.
He said "Gill slits and myotomes are all to no avail.
I've grown some metapleural folds, and sport an oral hood.
And all these fine new characters don't do me any good!"
(chorus)
He sulked a while down in the sand without a bit of pep.
Then he stiffened up his notochord and said "I'll beat 'em yet!
Let 'em laugh and show their ignorance; I don't mind their jeers!
Just wait until they see me in a hundred million years!"
"My notochord shall turn into a chain of vertebrae;
As fins, my metapleural folds will agitate the sea.
My tiny dorsal nervous chord shall be a mighty brain
And the vertebrates will dominate the animal domain!"
(chorus)
Metapleura: The lateral surfaces of the metathorax; the upstanding hollow ridges or latero-ventral folds which, in amphioxus, form the lateral margins of the ventral surface.
Myotome: The portions of an embryonic somite from which skeletal musculature is produced; the muscles of a metamere, especially in a segmented invertebrate.
Nereis: any of a genus Nereis of usually large, often dimorphic and greenish marine polychaete worms.
I had to share this! I learned of this song with my notes. XD