EVOLUTION

Think/Discuss:

The fieldtrip was beneficial because I was exposed to a lot of unique animals.

Our tour-guide told us a lot of beneficial information. It was beneficial learning

exactly how animals would interact with humans and I wanted to see how the

animals were treated in captivity. Based on my observations, I felt that some animals

such as the Panda Bears were given a ton of space and they seemed fine however the

wolves were not. I felt that the enclosed area for the wolves was to small and I was

surprised to see the wolf just standing in one spot staring at everyone passing by.

I do recommend this field trip because not only was I able to miss class, I was exposed to a lot of cool things. The only thing I would change is the amount of time spent at the zoo. I felt that everything was too rushed so next year I think it would be beneficial to leave earlier or even arrive later. 

 

 

Watch/Make Notes:

Clearly Stated Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SCjhI86grU

 

• Descent with Modification is essentially the offspring of parents will look and be different from their parents

• Common Descent states that everything on Earth is related and everyone comes from a common ancestor

• Common Descent is based on observable facts including fossils, DNA, and anatomy

•  Common Descent was rejected before because scientists felt that you cannot get order and complexity from random chaos

• Eventually Natural Selection can be used to explain it

•  Often what happens is creatures become perfectly sculpted to survive within their unique environments

• Sculpting happens because offspring will often be similar to the parent but eventually there may be a difference in the DNA resulting in a mutation

• Selective breeding for several years will produce dramatically superior individual

• Darwin proposed that nature is capable of selecting the individuals to breed

• Nature decides which offspring will survive and which wont

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Over generations, more and more creatures become more fit and are able to survive and that is called Natural Selection which is an observable fact (Viruses becoming anti-biotic resistant)

• Natural selection is the process by which random evolutionary changes are selected for by nature in a consistent, orderly, non-random way

• It's basically selective breeding but instead of humans choosing what animals to breed, nature chooses in its own twisted way

 

 

Reflect/Journal:

 

This module was crazy (mainly the textbook concepts). There were a ton of concepts discussed in this chapter and I felt that the textbook didn’t really explain them well. Natural Selection is probably the most important concept to learn in the whole unit and the different types of selection that was discussed in the chapter were really interesting. I felt that the textbook could have done a better job explaining the differences between the different types of selection. I also feel that an additional video explaining the differences between the types of selection could have been added. But eventually I was able to understand the concepts and it was fascinating. One of the things that is of grave concern is the human influence. I realize that humans are taking over a lot of land and I was surprised to learn just how much it affected the animals. The animals have to completely change their behaviours because of what humans are doing and it isn't fair. Thanks to the zoo trip, I was exposed to the behaviour of the animals. I was surprised to see the gorillas just sitting down and doing virtually nothing. I hope that the reason they are doing nothing isn't because of the fact that the zoo keepers put them in a cage. I think that the best animal at the Toronto Zoo were the lemurs just because of how much they interacted with us. They were constantly running towards the glass and getting us to acknowledge their presence which was cool.