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Natural Selection facts

While investigating facts about Natural Selection Definition and Natural Selection Movie, I found out little known, but curios details like:

A rare mutation among the Bajau people lets them stay underwater longer: natural selection at the PDE10A gene has increased spleen size in the Bajau, providing them with a larger reservoir of oxygenated red blood cells.

how natural selection works?

Josef Stalin fired, imprisoned, or executed 3,000 biologists because he preferred the research of a guy who denied the existence of genes ard natural selection, and thought that rye could be transformed into wheat. Soviet crop yields declined during his tenure.

What's natural selection in biology?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what natural selection means. Here are 50 of the best facts about Natural Selection Examples and Natural Selection Theory I managed to collect.

what's natural selection?

  1. A scientist let a computer program a chip, using natural selection. The outcome was an extremely efficient chip, the inner workings of which were impossible to understand.

  2. Due to elephants with tusks getting poached, humans are literally causing natural selection from more elephants being born tuskless over the past decades.

  3. A man was cured of HIV in Germany via a bone marrow transplant from a donor whose gene mutation made him immune to HIV. That gene is relatively common in N. Europe. Researchers have speculated that the gene is the result of natural selection during diseases similar to small pox or Black Death

  4. Goldfish are a completely manmade species and have no natural habitat. Originally domesticated as food, they began being selectively bred for their color—the result of a genetic mutation. Today, their color, size, shape, and fins are the result of thousands of years of selective breeding.

  5. About Alfred Russel Wallace, a British naturalist who thought up the theory of evolution by natural selection. After recording his expedition findings in the mid 1800’s, Wallace sent his work to his confidant Charles Darwin for a second opinion. Their first paper was a joint effort.

  6. When Sir Richard Owen (a critic of evolution by natural selection) bought a recently discovered Archaeopteryx feather, he was embarrassed to discover it was a missing link between reptiles and birds, which contradicted his belief that God had created the species by tweaking 'archetypes'.

  7. When China was selecting female astronauts for its space mission the women were required to be married, to have given birth naturally and to neither have decayed teeth nor scars.

  8. There is a theory that cats became domesticated because they adapted to hunting the vermin found around humans in towns and villages. They were tolerated by people and gradually diverged from their wild relatives through natural selection.

  9. Darwin received a letter from “working man” Alfred Russell Wallace describing a theory of natural selection before Darwin even announced and published his research.

  10. In the 17th century, black cats were burned bc they were "the devil". Black cats were spared if they possessed a small amount of white fur anywhere on their bodies, thought of as "God's thumbprint". 95% of black cats today have a small white spot on their chest due to the "UN-natural selection".

natural selection facts
What natural selection acts on?

Natural Selection data charts

For your convenience take a look at Natural Selection figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.

natural selection fact data chart about A YouTuber named  Primer  made a video showcasing how traits
A YouTuber named Primer made a video showcasing how traits mutate in response to natural selection utilizing a 3D graph.

Why natural selection is not random?

You can easily fact check why natural selection occurs by examining the linked well-known sources.

Nasir ad-Din Tusi, a Persian polymath, developed a theory of evolution by natural selection 600 years before Darwin. He wrote that hereditary variability is the leading force of evolution, and that organisms which can change faster are 'more variable', thus giving them an advantage over others

Before the Industrial Revolution, many dental problems (cavities, plaque buildup, misaligned teeth) were limited by a diet of hard, unprocessed, unsweetened foods. Natural selection has not prepared us for soft, processed, sugary foods. - source

Irreducible complexity is the idea that certain biological systems cannot evolve by successive small modifications to pre-existing functional systems through natural selection. This idea is central to the creationist concept of intelligent design, but it is rejected by the scientific community. - source

The human hand evolved alongside the use of tools and that the hands of our ancestors may have been subject to natural selection as a result of using simple cutting tools. - source

When natural selection is operating which of the following is likely to occur?

Like Greed, Altruism is also a Product of Natural Selection & Evolution, Common Even Among Insects, and is Not Merely A Product of Higher Consciousness, Naivete, or Compassion

How natural selection leads to evolution?

About Lyenkoism, a pseudo-scientific theory that claimed that communism was nature's base state in rejection to natural selection and genetic sciences. It was the official theory in the USSR until Stalin's death.

He suggested that natural selection is a mechanism for evolution in living organisms.

AL-Jahiz, A Ethiopian Muslim suggested Evolution of New Species by Natural Selection in 776AD (150 AH), 1000 yrs before Darwin, in his "Book of the Animals"

He introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.

The 3rd century BC philosopher Empedocles thought life arose through a simplified version of natural selection, where animals were created as random (often incomplete) assortments of parts, but the ones that "didn't fit" died until only the ones that could survive and reproduce were left

When natural selection occurs?

Stalin and Mao rejected evolution by natural selection and instead believed that animals evolved as a result of continual effort, like you should be able to make your future kids' necks longer by stretching yours.

Survival of the Fittest" was not a term used by Charles Darwin, but was actually coined by Herbert Spencer and has been used as an alternative to Darwin's original term "Natural Selection".

Darwin's Finches, a small group of Finches that were blown onto the Galapagos Islands by a big storm. They found themselves with an abundance of food & no predator's, hence reproducing rapidly causing food supplies to dwindle. The population was threatened, until natural selection intervened.

The Boeing 747 flies quieter due to naturally selected edges of their engines. When most planes fly, turbulence from air gushing over their engines creates noise. However, 747s have their engines serrated like a comb, which divides turbulence into tiny currents aka micro-turbulences.

Due to natural selection > 95% of S.E. Asians are allergic to dairy, whereas ~ 1% of Irish are lactose intolerant.

How natural selection occurs?

Humans, unique among primates, have stomach pH values closer to carrion feeders than to most carnivores and omnivores. In light of the number of pathogens that infect and kill humans, natural selection may have favored high stomach acidity because of its role in pathogen prevention.

Scurvy (disease that results from vitamin C deficiency) was widely spread among the sailors in the 19th century. Since lemon was expensive, lime was selected as second best natural cure for this disease. British sailors were obliged to consume one lime per day to prevent development of scurvy. Unusual diet is the reason they (British sailors) are known as "limeys" today.

In the past, when expensive laboratory equipment didn"t existed, people searched cures by observing similarities between the color and the shape of the plants and diseased organs. Oval-shaped leaves covered with whitish spots resemble diseased lungs. Logically, lungwort was selected as "natural cure" for pulmonary diseases.

An experiment testing evolution by natural selection has been running continuously since 1988. Over 60k generations it has demonstrated evolution of many traits including using citric acid as a carbon source in an aerobic environment

A strain of cockroaches in Europe has evolved to outsmart the sugar traps used to eradicate them. Scientists found that the mutant cockroaches react to glucose as distastefully bitter–an effective way for natural selection to quickly produce roaches that won't accept poisoned sweet baits

When selective logging took place in the 1800s native hardwood trees were replaced with mahogany but this was not a tree natural to the region.

The dysgenic effect, in which a reduction of natural selection pressures and infant mortality in modern times have led to an increased propagation of undesirable human traits(eg. low intelligence) and genetic disorders.

Aphex Twin was inspired by lucid dreams when producing Selected Ambient Works Volume II, and upon awaking would attempt to re-create the sounds and record them. He claimed to have natural synaesthesia, contributing to the album.

Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather, developed the theory of natural selection before Charles was even born

Aristotle thought up the the idea of natural selection 2,200 years before Darwin

"old person smell" is a universally recognized phenomenon, and may have survived millennia of natural selection by allowing humans to literally sniff out a suitable and fertile mate.

Evolution (the idea that species change over time) is actually a scientific fact and the "Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection" is the explanation of WHY the fact of evolution occurs.

He created the theory of natural selection which is the gradual way that heritable traits become biological traits.

The Dutch are taller because of natural selection

When you select a cook power on your microwave oven, you're selecting a duty cycle for the magnetron instead of actual output power as most microwaves are limited by the binary nature of the transformer design.

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Natural Selection. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Natural Selection so important!

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