Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection

If you look at the people around you, are they all the same? What would happen if we lived in a world where all the food was kept 8 feet off the ground and there was absolutely no way you could get it if you weren’t tall enough? Most likely, the short people would die off. The taller ones would multiply, and before long, instead of a population of people of all sizes, you would have a population of only tall people. Living things that are best-suited, or adapted, to their environment survive and multiply. Those that are not, are unable to survive. This process is known as natural selection. This process explains how Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution can occur. The purpose of completing this lab was to demonstrate that natural selection results in populations different than the original because of the adaptations that occur as a result of the population’s environment.

During the lab, we pretended that we were “birds” that eat “beetles”. In the lab, the beetles were represented by the different colored dots. The colors that we used were blue, red, and clear. We started out with 100 dots of each color. We were instructed to gather around the room in a circle, with the dots scattered around in the center on the floor. When the lights were off, we were supposed to wait because it was “night” and we didn’t hunt at “night”. When the lights turned on, it was “morning”, and as the saying goes, “the early bird gets the worm”, or in this case the beetle. :] Everyone in the class tried to get as many beetles as possible in the time limit that was allowed. In the end, 82/100 blue beetles, 84/100 red beetles, and 14/100 clear beetles were captured.

There were different techniques/traits that were used by different people. Some people were really quick and got many beetles, and others were really slow and got very few or none at all. People also used less honorable techniques and stole from other people or they tried to get beetles at night. They figured out which techniques worked well, and which ones did not. The ones that were successful and resulted in a large amount of beetles were used multiple times, and the techniques/traits that proved less successful died out. As a result, the dominant people will reproduce and pass on their successful traits, while the less dominant will be unable to reproduce and their traits will be unable to be handed down to the next generation of offspring.