Think Like a Goat: The Wildly Smart Ways Animals Communicate, Cooperate and Innovate

Think Like a Goat: The Wildly Smart Ways Animals Communicate, Cooperate and Innovate — page 5
ALWAYS Evolving What do beetles blue jays porcupines and people all have in common We're all connected to one another and to every other thing that's ever lived through the processes of evolution In the 1800s naturalist and scientist Charles Darwin developed his theory that species change or evolve gradually over many generations Observing finches and other animals during his travels around the world he noticed that there were small physical differences between creatures of the same species Darwin's Finches A. geospiza magnirostris B. geospiza parvula C. geospiza fortis CHAPTER ONE D. geospiza olivacea Parrot like bill In the wild animals of the same species compete for limited resources such as food and space Darwin realized that the animals with traits that give them a competitive advantage will survive and reproduce Think of polar bears which have thicker fur to protect them from the cold or lizards that can change skin color to blend in with their surroundings The surviving individual animals of a species pass these helpful traits on to their babies Darwin called this process natural selection A ground finch with a short thick beak that's especially useful for crushing large seeds will have baby finches that also have short thick beaks and eventually those finches babies will inherit short thick beaks too In this way helpful characteristics become more common in a species over time a very long time Continued gradual changes over many generations can eventually produce an entirely new species Grasping bill Probing bill Crushing bill