Can someone explain to me in REALLY EASY TERMS...... What is the THEORY OF EVOLUTION By Charles Darwin?

Question

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I've tried the internet but it dosen't have basic explanations ......

Thanks

Answer 1

Evolution, in biology, is a complex process by which the characteristics of living organisms change over many generations as traits are passed from one generation to the next. The science of evolution seeks to understand the biological forces that caused ancient organisms to develop into the tremendous and ever-changing variety of life seen on Earth today. It addresses how, over the course of time, various plant and animal species branch off to become entirely new species, and how different species are related through complicated family trees that span millions of years.

Answer 2

Charles Darwin came up with the idea of the theory of evolution based on what he knew about breeding plants and animals. It was known for hundreds of years that you could breed dogs, racing pidgeons or even tomatoes to be a certain shape, size or colour by "artificial selection" - breeding only the ones that looked or acted a certain way. This is how all the different breeds of dog came about, some were bred to be guard dogs, some to look cute, some to be good hunters. So now we have dobermen, sausage dogs and sheep dogs but they all came from wolves.

What Darwin realised was, if we could create new breeds of animal by "artificial selection" (selecting which dogs were allowed to mate), then nature must also do it's own "natural selection" in the wild. Natural selection is as simple as "if the wolves live in the mountains, where everything is grey, then a greyer wolf is better at hiding - so they get more to eat". What happens is the "fittest" survive and have more children than the "unfit", and in this case "fitness" partly means "is good at hiding around rocks". The animals change a small amount with each generation, and eventually the great-great-great-great-great grandchildren of the brown wolf are completely grey.

If this was true, then there must be all kinds of proof for it - so Darwin collected as much as he could find and put it into a book, "The Origin of Species". After he released the book, everyone else started looking for evidence too - and we've been finding new evidence every day for 150 years. There have been some small changes to the theory, but Darwin was mostly right - not one piece of evidence goes against the theory of evolution.

Christians didn't like the theory because it goes against the story of creation in The Bible - apes are our ancestors, not Adam and Eve. Science only tries to find the truth, it doesn't care that people might not like the answer!
Most people accept it today, all scientists including the Christian ones.

Answer 3

1. He discovered that animals and plants of the same species could differ in different places even if only a few miles apart. He wondered why? 2. He called these changes 'evolution' 3. He reasoned that, animals (leave plants out for a minute) mated with other animals of the same species that had characteristics or features which meant they could survive better in the places they lived. E.g. hairier creatures in colder weather. 4. This 'selective mating' sometimes produced very differing animals within the same species. E.g. a cat that lived further north had more hair than a cat that lived in warmer weather. 5. He created this 'theory of evolution' and stated that in principle, procreation was about the 'survival of the fittest'. Does this help?

Answer 4

That all life forms on the Earth (well technically all there is, be he was specific about life forms and especially biological or animal type life) changed or spawed or became what they are in a graduate process of small changes from an older, more rudimentary entity.

In other words the first single cell organism in the water clusted and eventually became a larger complex thing and over a period of time it became a jelly fish and over a period of time a gold fish and over a period of time that fish stuck its head out of the water and eventually learned to breath air and walked on the land and to do this had to develop feet from fins.

There is some debate as to if mutation is evolution in the strictest of terms.

Bird flu jumping to man. Some feel that is evolutionary, some don't.

Evolution is not suppose to be an abrupt process.

The fish isn't supposed to grow legs in one generation. It's supposed to take a long time.

There is also some dispute over the origins of man. Originally (Scopes Trial period in the 1930) it was said man came from a primate or ape.

Today a large view is that both man and ape came from something else, something maybe we haven't found.

The original view was man was a grandchild of the ape and today it's more like a cousin.

Of course none of this can be conclusively proven which is why it is a theory.

The concept of evolution can hold with the Creationistic view if one accepts the fact that God did not "FIX" a creature in nature, but simply created them and then they change as times goes by naturally.

Under the concepts of evolution a fish eventually turns into a paraket over hundres of thousands of years and that paraket continues but occasionally a larger paraket is born and if two of these large parkets mate they intensify the "large" gene and eventually this process continues for hundres of thousands of years and those "large" parakets because a new species we call a Macaw or Parrot.

That's the basic concept.

The Macaw or Parrot loses the "small" gene and just has the "large" gene.

That's what separates them, those DNA changes.

That's what makes them a different species.

Other views is that larger fish made Parrots and smaller fish made Parakeets.

There are no HARD and FAST rules only conjecture, hence it is a THEORY.

No one can say for sure if Parots came from PArakeets or came from different fishes.

Maybe Parakeets came from Gold Fish and Parots came from Oscars.

What is somewhat certain is that types of jelly fish travel deep into the sea and eventually change so they can handle the pressure and eventually this "new" type of jelly fish walks on the bottom of the sea miles down.

They never come up, they always stay down.

It is also believed that some of the original species eventually die off for one reason or another and only their evolved offsping remain.

The Elephant is believed to have evolved from the Wolly Mamoth.

Wolly is gone but Elephant remains.

The Hippo and Rhino may be an evolved form of dinosaur that has remained but their ancestors are gone.

Answer 5

I'll *try.*

First of all, evolution itself is not a theory. The theory seeks toexplain how evolution works.

That said, the theory brought forth by Darwin has been changed and refined quite a bit over the past 150 years, so the theory really can barely be said to be Dawin's... although he is the grandaddy of the whole idea.

Evolution is just the way a species' offspring differs from the parents. Small changes in the gene pool which result from not only mutations but also the perpetuation of traits tat are advantageous for the environment the species finds itself in result in ganges to the general population as a whole, and evolution is the word we use to describe those changes.

Answer 6

In a population of animals of one species, those who are the most fit are the one most likely to survive, and they are the most likely to breed. So every generation comes from the most healthy and most capable of the previous generation. This is most evident in animals like wolves and gorillas where the strongest male fathers -all- the children.

Also there are 'random mutations' in species. Every so often a 'baby' will be born with some little change giving it better vision or better smell or more strength or whatever. That baby has more chance of reproducing. Of course not all mutations are improvements, and those that aren't will have -less- chance of reproducing.

When environments change, species 'adapt' to the change. If the climate goes from tropical to temperate, over a period of thousands or even millions of years, animals will develop heavy coats and new ways of finding food, because as the weather gets colder those individuals with thicker fur will have a better chance of surviving and reproducing.

Suppose you take a petri dish and grow some bacteria in it. You dose those bacteria with an antibiotic. Not enough to kill them all, just, say, 90% of them. Then you let the population grow to the size it was before. If you give them the same dose of antibiotic now, you will only kill about 20%. So you raise the dose to kill 90% of them again, then let them grow back to the original population. After three or four times you will have bacteria that can survive 10 time the dose of antibiotic that originally killed most of them. (This is why, when the Dr. gives you antibiotics, you should take all the pills even though you feel better right away).

Some Christians say this is 'micro-evolution', and they don't have a problem with it, but it doesn't explain how whole new species come to exist, that is 'macro-evolution'.

Answer 7

In any group of animals, some have a better chance of surviving (defined as living long enough to reproduce and successfully reproducing often) than others. They may be better camoflagued, more attractive to the opposite sex, better at hunting for food, have more babies, or whatever.

Whatever genetic traits these individuals had will be in the next generation. The individuals that did not succeed well enough to reproduce will not have genes in the next generation.

This is phrased as 'survival of the fittest'. The zebras that are quick, agile, good at finding food, and good at mating pass on their genes. The zebras that are slow, bad at finding food, bad at mating, etc. don't.

What we are less clear on is whether this is a long, slow process, a rapid process sped up through mutations that help the individuals, some other process, or some combination of processes.

We can see evolution in action in things like common flu germs, which change all the time so they can infect the broadest number of hosts possible- who are working hard to be resistant to the germs.

Now- the reason we don't just see a bunch of super-smart, super-stong 'perfect animals' is that there is a battle going on- the giraffe gets better at eating unreachable leaves, so the tree gets better at protecting itself (maybe through more height, thorns, poisons, faster reproduction, etc.) The giraffe has to change to meet these changes- and changes in thir predators, habitats, etc. all at the same time.

Answer 8

i don't know if this is from Darwin but here goes.

every so often an animal mutates (a good example of this is the elephant man but he mutated in a bad way) when the mutation offers the animal a better chance to survive the species it belongs to will eventually have this mutation bred into the entire population.

the example used when i learned of this theory was butterflies there is a species of butterflie where some are born with a color scheme on its wings that looks like eyes this is thought to make the butterflie look several times larger than it really is keeping other animals from thinking it can eat it so the ones with eyes on its wings are expected to eventually be the whole of the species.

Answer 9

Mutations occur in the genetic code due to cosmic radiation-ultraviolet light--various environmental factors. This is a given and can be rigorously shown. Mutations also occur in asexual reproduction-transcription of DNA from one cell to a new cell is not 100% --errors occur from time to time--again--this is a given. Sexual reproduction gives an even wider latitude towards change in DNA. The point is that any given organism utilizes DNA to reproduce. Any organism "sits" in a ecological niche. When a mutation occurs--it can be one that has a benefical survival characteristic or a detremental one. If it is a beneficial characteristic, it gives that slightly changed organism a leg up on all of it's competitors, in time-it will dominate the competitotr or find a niche where the orignal organism is ill equipped to survive in. Over long periods of times these mutations diverge the organsim from the orignal organism. Natural selection. If a mutation gave a slight advantage to an organism for colder temperatures--you'd see this organism dominating in colder climes where the original could not survive. Over millions of years these small changes add up to very big differences in what the original organism was. (We share about 90% or so of the same DNA as every living cell on the planet--only about three percent has changed to make us what we are today).

Answer 10

A theory is "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena"

In Biology Evolution is defined as the change in allele frequencies in a population over time.

The Theory of Evolution is the theory that explains why allele frequencies change. This theory includes the propositions of mutation and natural selection.

An allele is one member of a pair or series of genes that occupy a specific position on a specific chromosome.

A Mutation occurs when a DNA gene is damaged or changed in such a way as to alter the genetic message carried by that gene.

Natural selection is the process by which favorable traits that are heritable become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable traits that are heritable become less common.

Individuals with favorable phenotypes are more likely to survive and reproduce than those with less favorable phenotypes. If these phenotypes have a genetic basis, then the genotype associated with the favorable phenotype will increase in frequency in the next generation.