2/15

This week, students were introduced to the concepts of adaptations, evolution, and natural selection. We discussed the voyage of Charles Darwin and the important discoveries that he made on the Galapagos Islands. We spent two days in class doing a "Designer Animal Activity." In this activity, students were given four environments to choose from, and they were required to design an animal with unique adaptations to survive and thrive in their chosen environment. Students had to consider what their animal would eat, how it would defend itself, maintain body temperature, care for its young, find shelter, etc. After designing everything, students had to choose a card that determined how their environment had changed (volcano eruptions, global warming, meteorites, shift in planetary rotation, etc), and then decide whether their animal still had the right adaptations to survive. Overall, students came up with some VERY interesting animals! Unfortunately, many of our "designer animals" were not adapted to survive the harsh environmenal changes. On Friday we looked at several examples of natural selection "in action." Some of these examples included the lizards from New Mexico, Hawiian crickets, insectiside-resistant insects, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the peppered moths from England. Next week we will do a lab to simulate the "peppered moth" example of natural selection.