(November 14, 2014 at 12:26 am)Exian Wrote: I was explaining evolution the best I could to my daughter the other day, and we got snagged up on how one species could become another. I told her minor changes add up over long periods of time. She looked like she was just taking my word for it, so I came up with this (thought I'd share it here and let it get picked apart before I told her):
Take 100 generations of any animal. Every 10 generations will be a bench mark for change. Animal 1 produces animal 2, animal 2 produces animal 3-- all the way up to 10. If some how the animal in generation 10 could find an animal from generation 1, they could reproduce, because not enough changes have occurred for speciation. But! once animal 10 produces animal 11, animal 11 can not reproduce with animal 1, because enough small changes have occurred to make it a new species of animal.
I'd also make it clear that its not that clean of a process and it takes way more than 10 generations. Also, there will be a lot more fart jokes. She loves those. So, what's up? Is there a simpler way?
Actually, let me apologize- This probably doesn't belong here. The conversation steered this way and I just posted this without thinking about it.
You have it exactly except that 100 or more generations would be better.
There's another way too. Sometimes a population gets split by a geographical barrier-- a landslide separates one population/species into two. Both sides continue breeding, and for several generations if you removed the barrier there would still be one species, but there would come a time when they could no longer breed even if you lifted the barrier.
The barrier can be social too. Change one bird's mating song and he and his off-spring might become a new breeding population.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
