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
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.
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