Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution

            Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England on February 12, 1809, as Abraham Lincoln. Charles Darwin attended Christ’s College, Cambridge where he studied theology. At first Charles was going to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor, but he soon realized that that was not for him. Before Darwin came up with the Theory of Evolution, he first went on a voyage around the world where he got the chance to see countless things, such as snakes with vestigial hind limbs and penguins flying through the water.

            One main part from that trip was the time he spent on the Galapagos Islands because he noticed the different types of tortoises and finches on the different islands. With the finches Darwin figured that all of the different type of becks all came from the same bird, the black grassquit. By knowing that a group of birds came from the same ancestor, but have different becks for different uses, Darwin came up with his Theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection. Charles Darwin’s theory is composed of six major ways of understanding natural selection, and they are:

1.      Organisms produce more offspring then they will survive

2.      Resources are limited (food, water, space etc.)

3.      In any population, variations exist – many of which are heritable

4.      In the struggle for existence, the individuals with the most favorable traits will be more likely to survive to produce offspring

5.      Over time, beneficial traits accumulates in a population and deleterious traits disappear

6.      Millions of years have been available for evolution to occur.

With this theory in mind we now can understand how different animals from the same ancestor have survived in different types of niches. At first people did not understand what Charles Darwin’s concept behind his theory. One of the craziest things about his theory is that he never really understood genetics.

            This theory changed the way we are able to figure out and discover new types of animals, plants, and even bacteria. A good example of the cause and effect of the theory would be to take an animal from their prefect niche and place it into another animal niche, such as the finches from earlier. Each bird came from the same ancestor, but have different because of the area that they live in. if we was to take to put two types of finches into the same niche there would be a battle for survival. There would be a lack of resource for one type of bird because they don’t have the necessary traits to survive in that area so they might die off. That’s one way to understanding natural selection and Charles Darwin’s theory.