Sorry I can’t be there today. But I’ve got two great activities for you while I’m gone.

First, do the Darwin “Scenarios” activity with the people at your table.

Then, in our previous class we played a game using Darwin’s theory of Natural selection to see if we could help a fictional species last for a million years. There were environmental factors that influenced change, and ways of adding variation to a population.

Now we can take what we have learned and actually apply it to a real evolution simulation. We obviously cannot make evolution happen in a lab, but we can simulate it using Darwin’s theory. Click the link below (iPad users must be in the Puffin browser, not Safari) to be taken to the simulation. Read the directions, follow the procedure I have provided, collect your data, and graph your results.

Link: Evolution Simulation

Watch how small changes in populations can have big impacts. You can also change settings to see how these animals would fair when their food source behaves differently.