Porscha

Natural Selection Lab Report

Introduction:
During Darwins trip to the Galapagos he discovered that Finches in the
Galapagos were similar to those of the South America mainland. Later he
made a theory that all the animals are very similar but that they are all
modified to fit their living situation. Some articles about it are
http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/tis2/index.php/evidence-for-evolutionmainmenu-65/53-darwins-finches.html and
http://earthwatch.org/expeditions/darwins-finches-and-natural-selection-inthe-galapagos.
My hypothesis for this activity was that the tweezers will pick up more
sunflower seeds than the skewers. This was my hypothesis because I thought
that the Skewers will be hard to pick up the sunflower seeds and because
they are skinny the sunflowers will just slip out and that the tweezers are
smaller and can pick them up faster.
Materials and Methods:
Materials: a small paper cup, sunflower seeds, tongs, clothes pins,
chopsticks, tweezers, hair clips, chip clips, binder clips and a timer.
Method: first, the teacher spread out the sunflower seeds across the table
and passed out a little paper cup aka the stomach and then she passed out
the beaks (tongs, clothes pins, etc.) and we had about 50 seconds to pick
up as many sunflower seeds as we could. After we counted the seeds and
there were 3 winners and 3 losers. The losers of that round had their beaks
were taken away and they were replaced with the beaks that the winners
had. There were rounds total.
Results:

Tongs
Clothes
pins
Skewers

Beginnin
g
5
5

6
6

7
6

9
7

8
9

9
9

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Tweezers
Hair clips
Chip
clips
Binder
clips

5
5
5

6
5
5

7
5
5

6
5
3

6
5
3

5
5
3

10
9
8
7
6

Beginning

The results, shown above, you can see that the tongs start to go
up drop by one and then go back up again. You can see that the
clothes pins went up by one for two rounds went up by one, and then
the last two rounds it went up by two. The skewers you can see went
down quite a bit but they never went extinct, the same also happened
with the binder clips. You can see that the hair clips stayed the same
for all five rounds.
Conclusion:
My hypothesis was supported by the data that I collected. As you can
see on the chart tweezers stayed at five or above and skewers stayed below
five. Some factors that could have made the results different could be the
time, maybe if we had more time maybe the skewer people could have

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gotten use to using them, o anyone in that matter not just the people that
used the skewers.
Discussion:
Pretty much any chemistry, biology, anthropology experiment uses the
scientific method. This helped demonstrate my use of the scientific method
because I made a hypothesis did an experiment and got results that tested
my hypothesis and this can be tested over and over again and each will have
different results. Some of the fundamental of evolutionary change produced
by natural selection are 1. A trait must be inherited if natural selection is to
act on it, 2. Natural selection cannot occur without population variation in
inherited characteristics, 3. Fitness is a relative measure that changes as the
environment changes, 4. Natural selection can act only on traits that affect
reproduction. This activity stimulated the evolution of natural selection
because the losers beaks were taken away and given what the winners
had, so in the wild the losers were eaten and the winners had more
offsprings. One example of humans and how they are still evolving is their
immune system and over time it keeps getting a little stronger to s lot of the
diseases.
References:

Are humans still evolving by Darwin's natural selection? n.d.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-12535647 (accessed
September 25, 2015).
Jurmain, Kilgore, Trevathan. Human Origins. 2013.