In artificial selection, we humans choose individual specimens of plants or animals for breeding on the basis of characteristics that seem to us desirable. In natural selection, the environment takes the place of human choice. As individuals with certain hereditary characteristics survive and reproduce and individuals with other hereditary characteristics are eliminated, the population will slowly change. If some horses were swifter than others, for example, these individuals would be more likely to escape predators and survive, and their progeny, in turn, might be swifter, and so on. Fact after fact, observation after observation, culled from the most remote Pacific island to a neighbor's pasture, is recorded, analyzed, and commented upon.
Every objection is weighed, anticipated, and countered.
Click here for more books. The World of Science. All Rights Reserved.