How does an animal adapt to things if the animal that experienced it died?

Question

For example killing cockroaches makes them harder to kill or killing them with baygon makes them adapt if they’re already dead?

In: Biology

Answer 1

This is a pretty confusing concept, because both individuals *and* species can adapt.

This question deals with a species as a whole adapting.

When a species adapts, it happens incrementally over lots and lots of generations. Individuals help by dying. They’re like peasants in a medieval battle that get sent in to test the castle’s defences: they do a great job just by failing to survive.

Every time one individual does not die, it’s because they have something slightly different about them. A tiny characteristic that makes them a tiny bit harder to kill. That not-dead individual has a ton of babies with another not-dead individual, and the babies inherit the characteristic that lets them survive.

This is adaptability. Over time, the whole population will have that characteristic that lets them survive, because the rest of them are dead.

A great example is the *peppered moth*.

This moth used to be a lovely light grey colour to match the bark of the trees it lives in. Every now and again, one was hatched a dark grey colour and was quickly spotted and eaten by predators. With the industrial revolution, the bark of the trees were stained dark grey by soot. The light moths stood out starkly and were eaten, while the dark ones were camouflaged and survived. Now, the moths are predominately dark grey. This is adaptability.