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The new BBC series Evolution, presented by Chris Packham, has been garnering favourable reviews and by the clip below, I am sure you will see why.  Evolution is a difficult thing to explain, but with the aid of these visuals, and a great script, this new show manages to do it in a way that is both understandable and genuinely awe-inspiring. It takes a subject that can often seem abstract and transforms it into a compelling journey through time, showing how every living thing is connected by the extraordinary process of evolution.

In this clip, Packham begins with the warthog and how it has evolved to solve a certain problem – the fact that its mouth isn’t really very close to the ground, which is where it gets its food (you will have to watch the video to discover this particular adaptation).  However, he soon moves on to the elephant, which had the same problem, but evolution solved it in a different way – by extending the trunk.  Although this isn’t the whole story – it’s a great clip that covers most of the important elements of this particularly startling piece of evolutionary magic.  On the journey we get to see palaeomastadon, platybelodon and of course, everyone’s favourite, the mammoth. If you would like to find how to watch Evolution in your region, visit the BBC Earth website.

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.

When Charles Darwin arrived at the Galapagos Islands in 1831 he had no idea that what he would discover there would help him conceive his theory of natural selection.

Yet despite the many wonders he saw there was one thing he could not experience as we can: the sight of sharks, mola molas, turtle, iguanas, penguins and even orcas in their own habitat.  Thanks to Dustin Adamson of Ocean Shutter here is that underworld realm in all its startling and unusual beauty that Darwin could only dream about.