Former biology teacher and science communicator at the Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity
Meet the popular YouTube channel [Suspicious Fish] in a book!
450,000 subscribers, 130 million cumulative views, and an average of 850,000 views per episode

"The Real Science of Dissecting Suspicious Fish" Volumes 1 (Marine Life) and 2 (Terrestrial Life) released simultaneously.
Supervised and recommended by Korea's top biologist, Choi Jae-cheon!
The National Science Teachers Association strongly recommends Samulgungi and Orbit!

The content of the science channel [Suspicious Fish], which has captivated 450,000 YouTube subscribers by solving curiosity about the creatures around us that we thought we knew well but did not know properly, has been published by Arte as Volume 1 (Sea Life) and Volume 2 (Land Life) of 『Suspicious Fish's Real Dissecting Science Book』.


'Suspicious Fish' is an abbreviation for 'Suspicious Biology Teacher', and the author worked as a biology (life science) teacher at a high school before becoming a science YouTuber.
During my teaching career, I met many students who had lost interest in science, and I pondered, “How can I convey the joy of science to students?”
I felt it was necessary to teach people how to enjoyably satisfy their curiosity, so I started creating content that introduces the knowledge that can be acquired through detailed exploration of living things and illuminates the process of observation.


The author turned to YouTube to provide a platform for broad scientific experience based on textbooks and curricula, and to introduce the "fun of biology" to many people.
This book collects the 'dissection experiments' that many subscribers have supported and loved among the contents of 'Suspicious Fish', and provides detailed records of biological observations and rich background knowledge that could not be included in the video.
The following are the points that the book focuses on and introduces in order to differentiate it from the video.


1) It introduces the dissection process of living organisms sequentially and helps to understand living organisms more deeply by linking the reason for existence and method of existence of the relevant organs through two paths: text and pictures.

2) Visual materials (photos and drawings, etc.) detailing the external appearance and internal organs of each creature are included in Volume 1 (260 cuts) and Volume 2 (225 cuts).

3) It is organized so that the entire process of biological exploration can be understood at a glance by referring only to visual materials and captions.

4) Even if you read only the subheadings, you can understand the main characteristics of the organism at a glance.

5) It provides biological knowledge and terminology in conjunction with the latest curriculum, and footnotes provide detailed explanations of unfamiliar biological terms made up of Chinese characters to help students understand them accurately.

6) Each element of the book is differentiated in difficulty, providing scientific knowledge that can be enjoyed by a wide range of readers, from preschool children who cannot read to elementary school students, middle and high school students, and adults (in order of increasing difficulty are footnotes, main text, subheadings, introduction, visual aids and captions, and introduction).

Volume 1, 'Sea Life', introduces creatures belonging to the same taxonomic group in the order of vertebrate fish, echinoderms, arthropods, and mollusks, while Volume 2, 'Terrestrial Life', contains scientific explorations of the bodies of various animals and plants living on land.

Now, let's dissect a shark. If you cut open the shark's belly from the anus, you'll find it's full of internal organs.
The liver is the largest of the shark's internal organs.
Cartilaginous fish, to which sharks belong, do not have a swim bladder, an organ that provides buoyancy, unlike bony fish.
So, cartilaginous fish use their large livers instead of swim bladders to achieve buoyancy.
If you cut open a shark's liver and float it in water, you will see that it floats.
Because shark liver is rich in fat, it is lighter than water (has a low density), which allows it to function as a buoyancy aid in the body.
For this reason, sharks have very large livers.
---From "Page 23, Shark"

Inside the anchovy, you can also observe the anchovy's digestive tract, which extends from the esophagus through the stomach to the intestines.
Let's take a closer look at the anchovy's stomach. The stomach is surrounded by finger-like organs.
This part surrounding the stomach is the digestive organ of a fish called the pylorus.
The pylorus is a unique digestive organ found in fish that secretes digestive enzymes and absorbs nutrients at the border between the stomach and small intestine.
Here's a surprising fact.
By examining the digestive tract of an anchovy in detail, we can also find out what food the anchovy consumed before it died.

---From "Page 38, Anchovies"

Now, let's take a look inside the sea cucumber. If you cut open the inside of the sea cucumber, you'll see orange, thread-like structures.
This is known as the sea cucumber's roe and is widely used as food, but to be precise, it is the gonad part where the sea cucumber's reproductive cells are formed.
The orange ones are the female gonads (ovaries), and the milky ones are the male gonads (testes).
After removing the gonads, the sea cucumber's long digestive tract can be seen.
The digestive tract of sea cucumbers is long and winding, with the esophagus, stomach, and intestines extending from the mouth to the anus.
The digestive tract of this sea cucumber is also made into salted seafood and eaten, which is a food called 'Konowata'.
Konowata is known as one of Japan's three great delicacies, along with eel roe and sea urchin roe.

---From "Sea Cucumber" on pages 98-99

Among these, insects and shrimp have many similarities.
In fact, insects are taxonomically closer to crustaceans than to civets and spiders.
That's why, if you look closely at shrimp, you can see many parts that are similar to insects.
But we hate insects and love crustaceans.
Is it because crustaceans are delicious? This chapter will be quite interesting to read while considering the similarities between shrimp and insects.
So now let's start dissecting the shrimp.
From now on, we will take a closer look at the shrimp that we have been ignoring.

---From "Page 109, Shrimp"

But while shrimp and crayfish look quite similar, doesn't the crab's body structure seem completely different from that of shrimp and crayfish? There's a surprising twist here.
In fact, the crab's body has a structure quite similar to that of shrimp or crayfish, but surprisingly, the crab's body is folded in half.
Let's now observe the red crab and find out exactly what it means for it to be folded in half.

---From "Page 135, Hongge"

The gonads are located on the upper part of the clam's feet.
In bivalves, the intestine passes inside the gonads.
So if you cut off the foot and carefully cut open the gonad area, you can see the intestines running through it.
Lastly, when a foreign substance enters the body of a bivalve, it secretes calcium carbonate internally to protect the foreign substance and remove it.
The result of this defensive action is a beautiful pearl.
Beautiful pearls are created when bivalves try to protect their bodies from foreign substances.
Did you know that there are many interesting facts hidden in living things?
As we live, there are times when we face difficult trials.
But if you can endure such trials like an oyster embraces a foreign substance, it won't just remain as a scar, but will be reborn as a beautiful pearl!
---From "Page 181, Shellfish"

Unlike other clams (oysters, clams) that move little or very slowly, scallops are dynamic swimmers.
They swim by repeatedly opening and closing their two shells like castanets, and when the shells close, water is shot out through the gap at the back of the shell, providing propulsion and movement.
However, it is said that scallops' swimming consumes so much energy that once they start moving properly, they have to stay still for several hours afterwards.
To understand how a scallop's shell opens and closes, we need to look inside the scallop.
If you cut the scallop's scapula, it will split in half. This scapula is the adductor muscle, a bivalve muscle that we also looked at in clams.

---From "Page 188, Scallop"

Let's take a closer look at the inside of an oyster. The membrane attached to the shell is the mantle, which secretes the shell.
Mollusks with shells, such as abalone, conch, and clams, all secrete shells through a part called the mantle, and oysters are no exception.
If you remove the outer membrane of an oyster and look inside, you can see four layers of gills.
The reason gills take up so much space is because bivalves, to which oysters belong, use gills not only for breathing but also for feeding.

---From "Page 202, Oysters"

Abalone is a creature with many fascinating features.
Abalones move by creating waves with their muscular legs located on their abdomen, much like a snail moves.
At this time, the suction power (adhesion) of the abalone's feet is so strong that it is difficult to remove them by hand.
And the abalone has a pair of tentacles on its head.
There is also a pair of eyes located next to the antennae.
If you zoom in on the head, you can see the abalone's eyes in quite detail.

---From "Page 212, Overturning"

It's fascinating how countless creatures on Earth are grouped together according to specific criteria.
What's the point of classifying organisms by finding similarities between them? Surprisingly, taxonomy is the discipline that provides evidence for one of the most important theories in biology: the theory of evolution.
In the past, it was believed that species never changed because they were created by God.
However, the similarities between organisms discovered through taxonomy have become strong evidence of 'evolution', that organisms have a common ancestor and have differentiated into various species over a long period of time.


The closer organisms are taxonomically related, the more they have in common. Biologists analyze the evolutionary relationships of organisms through this classification and explain the origin of life in the form of a tree called a "phylogenetic tree."
I wanted to share this evolutionary flow with you by introducing various creatures through YouTube.
However, due to the nature of YouTube content, I always felt it was a shame that each video had to focus on only one creature.
So, in this book, we have grouped together creatures belonging to the same taxonomic group and organized them so that you can fully understand the meaning of taxonomy.
I hope that through this book, you can indirectly experience the mystery of life and discover the joy of biology.
Biology is so much fun, isn't it? Until you all discover the joy of living things! "Suspicious Fish" continues.

---From the "Epilogue"