Darwin and Evolution for Kids: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities
were London's grimy streets polluted air and bustling crowds He needed to take a break to clear his head So in 1838 he started reading a few books for fun what ever interesting titles caught his eye Anything to get his mind off the boxes of specimens and scribbled notes stacked up all around his room On that evening in late October while relaxing in his study he picked up a copy of a book called Essay on the Princi ple of Population which had been written 40 years earlier but which was still a bestseller The author was a minister named Thomas Malthus who had tried to figure out why there were always so many poor people in England Even though the book wasn't as entertaining as an adventure story or a romance novel Darwin was glad to be reading something that had nothing whatsoever to do with his own work on plants and animals Or so he thought It turns out Darwin couldn't have been more mistaken During his worldwide voyage Darwin had learned what other scientists already knew that there were many more kinds of animals in the world than people in the past had ever imagined In ancient times when the story of Noah's Ark was written people thought that there were at most a hundred different kinds of animals dogs cats cows lions mice sheep foxes hawks sparrows beetles deer monkeys and so on quite a variety but few enough that Noah could easily fit them all into his ark But by Darwin's time in the mid 1800s explorers had discovered thousands and thou sands of different kinds of animals and every year hundreds more were being added to the list As Darwin looked over his specimens he often wondered Had each species appeared fully formed separate from every other species Or were they somehow all related to each other What espe cially intrigued Darwin was how certain species were very
similar to each other but still a little different in notable ways This kind of bird had a slightly longer beak than that kind this kind of monkey looked just like that kind of mon key except that it had sharper teeth Why Darwin was becoming convinced that millions of years ago all animals had started from a single ancestor but that little by little the creatures changed until eventually several different types appeared These types developed into all the animals we see today The name later given to this process was evolution The idea had been around for a long time but what no one including Darwin had ever been able to fig ure out was how animals evolved Many ideas were sug gested over the years but they all seemed unlikely One respected writer even declared that animals grew new fea tures through sheer willpower The more Darwin tried to concentrate on his specimens the more his thoughts drifted to what he called the species question In fact Darwin was so interested in this topic that he had started a secret notebook to record his thoughts on evolution while he wrote about his Beagle adventure But that fall evening in 1838 as he picked up Malthus's book evolution was the last thing on his mind He wanted to relax So he sat back with a sigh and started to read The main point Malthus tried to make in his book was that there were just too many people in the world He stated that the planet's population was growing faster than humankind's ability to grow enough food to feed everyone Because of this people were always fighting in order to get enough to eat and struggling amongst themselves to have the most comfortable lives In this struggle some were win ners and unfortunately some were losers Those who came out on the losing side ended up begging on the streets and living in the crowded slums of cities like London Every now and then Malthus pointed out when the size of the popula
tion got out of hand some kind of disaster inevitably came along to kill off its weakest members Sometimes this disas ter was a famine other times it was a plague a war or some other catastrophe But according to Malthus the root cause of poverty and suffering was the tendency of the human race to increase its population far more quickly than it could be fed All this seemed sensible to Darwin But then he realized that the same principles are true for all animal species not just humans In the wild most types of animals give birth to large litters yet most of these baby animals never grow up because they either starve to death or are eaten by preda tors Of course Why had it never occurred to him before The idea that struck Darwin at that moment was so amazing yet so obvious that he practically dropped the book on the floor Malthus had unknowingly revealed to him the secret of evo lution that had mystified scientists for
It was a struggle just to survive in the overcrowded cities of England Darwin's own observations in nature had shown him that animals usually gave birth to far more babies than could ever survive So he wondered what was so special about those few that managed to stay alive Darwin knew that every living thing was slightly different from all its brothers and sisters If a baby rabbit for example had weaker legs than its sister it would be less able to run away from a fox So the fox would catch and eat the slower rabbit while its aster sister would run away and survive and eventually grow up and give birth to babies of her own These baby rabbits would inherit strong fast legs from their mother And then the process would repeat itself when those babies grew up and had their babies In this way little by little a species would change with every generation developing better muscles for running different colored fur for camou flage longer necks for reaching food and so on With
