I see many people are using the term “natural selection” lately, but i never understood it (fyi i am not a native speaker) to me it just seems like people are just trying to act smart by mentioning this term (with no context). Please, explain like im 5
In: Biology
This is also a term used most commonly in regards to people doing dumb shit. Like for example 2 guys walking down the street and one decides he wants to play chicken with a car because he is an idiot. If he gets hit by the car and dies natural selection has taken its course. Another example is say there is a guy that instead of getting a job and taking care of his shit, decides he’s just going to kick in people’s doors and rob them to make money. One day he kicks in the wrong door and is met with a shotgun blast to the chest. He was stupid enough to not consider the consequences in his actions, or chose to ignore them, therefore he is met with natural selection. Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
100 deer can all run at slightly different speeds, the slower ones tend to get caught and eaten more often by fast predators meaning that only 50 of the 100 deer survive to breed the next generation and pass on their genes for running faster. Nature is selecting the faster running deer or natural selection.
Natural selection is the way in which nature puts pressure on organisms to act or behave in a certain way.
If you have two kids, and they have different colored eyes, if there is a reason in nature that makes it so people with green eyes are 0.5% more likely to die than people with brown eyes, over a long time and many generations, the people with green eyes will go extinct. This is because each generation, the person with brown eyes has a 0.5% better chance of surviving and having kids.
“Natural selection” is a term relating to the theory of evolution, where only the strongest/smartest/most fit animals survive to make the next generation, because all of the weak/stupid/worst adapted ones die off early on and take themselves out of the gene pool (meaning, the population that will reproduce.)
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/her/evolution-and-natural-selection/a/darwin-evolution-natural-selection
Natural selection is the basic process of evolution broken down into a generational perspective.
Basically:
Each individual is different. Some are stronger, faster, smarter, whatever.
In the wild, the individuals who are least suited to survive are the most likely to die off.
Whatever is left is “naturally selected” to pass on their genes to the next generation, allowing for more of the species to possess the beneficial traits that help them survive.
Natural Selection is the process in which “Nature” aka all things living, push evolution forward by culling undesirable traits. Note: this doesn’t necessarily mean the very best traits, they are the one’s that allow a creature to reproduce, thus passing along that trait.
A good example is that caterpillar gif from the frontpage yesterday. It’s a caterpillar that evolved to look like a snake, which would deter predators, and help the caterpillar grow up to reproduce. This didn’t happen overnight, rather, it’s more that “caterpillars bearing resemblance to a common predator snake had a better chance of survival” This act over thousands or millions of years continues improving onto the concept until it becomes what it is today.
It is the process where over generations, a species passes along the traits that benefited them the most while getting rid of traits that hold them back. Humans have a few traits which give us natural advantages over other animals. We are bipedal, so it takes us less energy to move around then an animal that walks on 4 legs. We have highly developed brains that allow us to communicate more effectively and plan for our future (store food, build houses…). There are many other examples we could look at and see systemic gradual increases in ability over the generations which lead to our opposable thumbs, our teeth, our ears, our sight… We got these traits by natural selection.
Our eyes may be the easiest example. At first nothing could sense the light, just blobs of cells bumping around in the dark. Then some developed the ability to sense light and dark which gave them the ability to “see” if it is night or day. Then these new light sensors get put into one centralized place and they can see more then just light and no light, they can start to distinguish shapes and movement. Then the place they are stored becomes shaped better and the clarity gets better, or it becomes movable like a muscle and they can change where they are looking. This keeps happening for thousands of years and we get to an eagle seeing a rabit from 3 miles away.
But it can be anything that gives one member of a species any advantage in any way. Birds developed bright feathers to attract mates. Some animals have developed to look like other animals or objects for protection, a walking stick is a bug that looks like a stick for example so predators will have a harder time finding them, some lizards have developed bright colors to look like their poisonous cousins. Some fish can swim deeper than others to avoid predators or find harder to access food sources. We have even seen life on underwater smoke stacks where the heat would boil regular fish alive but there they have adapted to survive it.
Unhealthy animals are more likely to die before they have babies than healthier animals. The genes from the unhealthy animal that died will not be passed on. Nature selects the genes that are the best for survival. Because the others die.
Latest Answers