9 Adaptations-Low

Adaptations Written by Ron Fridell

Introduction Afternoon sunlight shines through the trees in a park. A small bird called a warbler sings on a tree branch. Suddenly, he stops singing. He catches an insect flying by. The insect can't get away, and the warbler eats his snack. Down on the ground, a red cardinal cracks open seeds with his bill. A rat-tat-tat-tat sound rings out as a woodpecker makes a hole in a tree. Hunting grubs, she drills through the bark. On a pond nearby, some ducks float along. Their heads dip into the water. When they come up, their bills drip with water.

These birds are all looking for a meal. But because their food is different, their beaks have different shapes. The warbler's beak is pointed like tweezers. The cardinal's beak is short and hard like a nutcracker. The woodpecker's beak is hard and pointed. The ducks bills are long and wide. Over many thousands of years these birds' beaks changed to help them gather the food they need. All plant and animal species have adaptations, or changes that help them survive in their habitat. How do adaptations help each living thing? Let's find out.

Survival of the Fittest Species adapt to changes in their environment in order to survive. How do adaptations happen? A species is made up of individual organisms. Individuals are born with slight differences. These differences may change the way an organism grows and what it can do. Some individuals have features that help them live in a certain place. These individuals are able to survive and have offspring. Those helpful features are passed on to offspring in the next generation. Individuals that do not have these features may not survive. They will not have offspring. Over time, more and more individuals are born with the features that help them survive. These features become adaptations for the whole species. This idea is known as survival of the fittest. The first person to write about this idea was Charles Darwin, a British scientist. He wrote about it in a book that came out in 1859.

Let's consider an example of how one adaptation happened Millions of years ago, all whales had teeth and breathed out of holes at the end of their snouts. Over many generations, some whales developed a breathing hole farther up their head. These whales could breathe more easily in deep water. They could rise to the water's surface and take a breath without sticking their snouts above the water. As whales began to spend more time far out in the ocean, away from shore, more whales with higher breathing holes survived. Their babies also had breathing holes high on their heads.

Today, a whale's nose, called a blowhole, is on top of its head. The blowhole makes it easier for the whale to breathe. When it needs to breathe, a whale keeps the blowhole above water. It takes a breath through its blowhole. Then the whale dives back down into the ocean.