Why Do Animals Have To Adapt/Evolve?
What is The Difference Between Evolution and Adaption?
Adaptation is what occurs to individual organisms, like longer beaks, darker fur, lighter skin, being able to hold their breath longer, etc. So adaptation is a change by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment, but even after adapting, the organism still remains the same thing it originally was. Adaptation is reversible. Evolution, however, creates so many changes that an organism is no longer the same species. The changes become so great that breeding with organisms of the former type is no longer possible; the change is not reversible. Many adaptations are necessary for evolution to work. For example, if the environment a bird lives in allows for longer beaks to be beneficial, those birds who adapted to longer beaks will have an easier time getting food for survival and will be more likely to pass their genes for long beaks to their babies. After many generations, all the birds of that species will have longer beaks than the first set of birds and evolution will have occurred.
Adaptation vs. adaption
The words "adaption" and "adaptation" mean exactly the same thing. Specifically, both words describe the act of changing something to meet new conditions. Adaptation is the most commonly spelt way and is the only one recognised in most dictionairies. I put this here just to clarrify, because at first I was very confused to if they meant the same thing or which one was correct.
Breif Overveiw Of pHYSICAL ADAPTATION
All animals live in habitats. Habitats provide food, water, and shelter which animals need to survive, but there is more to survival than just the habitat. Animals also depend on their physical features to help them obtain food, keep safe, build homes, withstand weather, and attract mates. These physical features are called physical adaptations. Physical adaptations do not develop during an animal's life but over many generations. The shape of a bird's beak, the number of fingers, color of the fur, the thickness or thinness of the fur, the shape of the nose or ears are all examples of physical adaptations which help different animals to survive.
Cool adaptation fact
In 2003 2% of male asian elephants were born without tusks. In 2011 that statistic has risen to 38%. This is widely thought to be because they have learned to know that if they don't have tusks, they won't be hunted for ivory.
Why do Animals Adapt?
Animals must adapt in order to evolve. They must change to be able to face the new challenges that the environment gives them. This can range from developing sharper teeth in order to eat a larger variety of nutrients if food is scarce; to growing more fur in order to keep warm in the cold temperatures they may be exposed to. An animal that faces new/different conditions that cannot adapt to those conditions will die or migrate to where the conditions are what it can survive in. For example giraffes have adapted in many ways, they have learned to live in herds, which helps protect themselves from predators. They have grown longer necks in order to access their food more easily, and their tongues have turned blue so they don’t get sun burnt. It is almost certain that every living thing on this planet has adapted several times. Adaption doesn’t only have to be changes of physical traits either; it can be the way something thinks, behaves, eats, sleeps, the list goes on and on. Let’s say every day you drive down a certain road to get to school, but this day that road is closed so you have to take a different route. YOU are adapting to change in order to get to school.
Diagrams
wHY DO ANIMALS EVOLVE?
All species are going to evolve over time, just a little bit, due to non-random mating (which means they choose who they mate with). If the animal they are mating with has adapted in a certain way than that means that their babies are likely to be born with those changes. When you add in the fact that there will be different reproductive success — meaning, some animals will be successful and have lots of babies, and some will be less successful and have few or no babies — then you start to see how that change over time can occur.