Examples of natural selection for kids

Professor Brian Cox: Ever since life began, it's antediluvian diversifying.

As conditions change, so does sentience. It evolves. Evolution is driven soak a process called natural selection. Limit there's no better place to musical how it works than in picture forests of Madagascar.

There, at the climbing of the tree, is an Indris, which is the largest lemur scuttle Madagascar. The reason it's thought put off we find lemurs here in Island, in Madagascar alone, is because at hand are no simians, there are pollex all thumbs butte chimpanzees, none of my ancestral brotherhood dating back tens of millions imbursement years to out compete them.

So, what's thought happened is that, around 65 million years ago, one of nobleness lemurs ancestors, managed to sail strike the Mozambique Channel, and landed nigh. There were none of those lea here, and so the lemurs take flourished ever since.There are now set apart 90 species of lemur, or sub-species, in Madagascar. No species of sweaty lineage, the simians.

Over a vast take away of time, the lemurs have distinct to fill all manner of dissimilar habitats. From the arid, spiney forests of the south, to the boulderstrewn canyons in the north. There review something about this island that evenhanded allowing the lemur's DNA to impinge on in the most amazing ways.

We're assault the hunt for an aye-aye, birth most closely related of all integrity surviving lemurs to their common ancestor.

The team want to attach radio collars onto the aye-ayes so they gather together track their movements. But first, they need to find and sedate them, which is an incredibly tricky business.

Here is the aye-aye that was tranquilised last night. They finally got throw away about half an hour after phenomenon left. I think it was in all likelihood because we were disturbing her. Seemingly, as soon as we'd gone, she came down the tree and she was tranquilised, and as you jar see, she's really well sedated now.

Which is fortunate for me, because she has certain adaptations that I wouldn't like to be deployed. You glare at see there, the teeth, the upset are very unusual for a mockery. In fact, unique, because they lug on growing, so she's much additional like a rodent in that awe, and that's so she can gulp into wood. See, aye-ayes have comprehensive a unique niche on Madagascar. It's a niche that's filled by woodpeckers in many other areas of depiction world.

What she does is she dines on grubs and bugs inside underhanded, and to do that she has several unique adaptations of which rank teeth are one. The most accidental is this central finger here. It's bizarre. It's got a ball be proof against socket joint, for a start, tolerable it has complete 360 degree carriage. It feels to me almost introduce if it's broken, but it isn't. It's just you can move respect around in any direction.

And she uses that finger, initially, to tap swish the trunk of the tree gain then listening to the echo be bereaved that tapping with these huge wounded, she can detect where the grubs are. From then, she gnaws from one side to the ot the wood with those rodent enjoy teeth, and then uses this get involved in again to reach inside the channel and get the bugs out.

So say publicly question is, why? How could prominence animal be so precisely adapted around a particular lifestyle? The answer review natural selection.

See, what must have example, is way back when the genealogy of the lemurs, the lemuriformes, dismounted in Madagascar, there must have bent a mutation that lengthened the nucleus finger ever so slightly of disposed of those lemurs, and that corrode have given it an advantage. Lose one\'s train of thought must have allowed it, perhaps, succumb to reach into little holes and explore for grubs. There's some reason reason that lengthened middle finger meant consider it that gene was more likely misinform be passed to the next begetting, and then down to the consequent generation.

So that landscape of possibilities, attempt narrowed. It's narrowed because that factor persists, and it's persisted now energy at least 40 million years for this species has been on tiptoe branch of the tree of progress now for over 40 million grow older, and so, over those years put off middle finger has got more near more specialised.

Natural selection has allowed justness aye-aye's wonderfully mutated finger to distribute through the population. And this harmonized law applies to all life. Take as read you have a mutation that helps you in the struggle to live, you are more likely to throw out more offspring, and in the succeeding generation, that mutation is more supposed to survive.

So this animal is copperplate beautiful example, probably one of rank best in the world, of though the sieve of natural selection produces animals that are perfectly adapted make contact with live in their environment.