Natural Selection Explained: Darwin, Adaptation and Evolution
Saturday, 30 May 2026
Species of animals change over time, some just a little but
others quite a lot! Science took a while to catch up but in 1858 the idea of Natural
Selection was put forward. We have Charles
Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace to thank for that, because it’s been around
ever since. Soon after, Darwin would publish “On the Origin of Species” in
1859, a book that shook educated society to the core. In fact, the theory of evolution was not taught in many schools because people disagreed with it - and there is still some dissent today (in some places!).
But how does natural selection work? This hugely interesting video from the Natural
History Museum in London takes the giraffe as an example. We know how well
suited they are for survival, especially because of their long necks and tongues
that help them pick off the juiciest leaves from even the tallest of
trees. They didn’t always have long
necks and tongues – and the changes that happened to make it so are
called adaptations. There is also the fact that every single member of one
species is just a little different from all the others – and that’s called
variation. This variation can sometimes mean that certain individuals have an
advantage over others in their natural environment.
So, natural selection happens because animals with
adaptations that make them more
successful are way more likely to survive long enough to produce offspring who
will have the same adaptation. SO, that’s
why if you go back far enough, and encountered the ancestor of today’s giraffes,
you will probably have great difficulty in recognising it as such. To learn more about variation, adaptation and
natural selection, look at the video below. It’s put forward in a very straightforward
way which makes you wonder why it too so long for us to get to Darwin and his ideas. I guess something is only obvious when it’s made
obvious.
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