One of the Honey Badger’s most impressive weapons is not physical at all. The Honey Badger has developed incredible behavior variations when it comes to learning ability. This behavioral variation stems from the animals large brain to body size ratio. Their large brains have resulted in an incredible intelligence for sophisticated planning, tool use, and strategy. This provides the Honey Badger with an upper hand in the harsh and predator filled environment, which they live for both protecting themselves and foraging for food (Hughes, 2001). These variations for traits have equipped the badger with exceptional means of survival.
The second condition of natural selection evolution involves the Honey Badgers heritability of its complex traits (Phelan, 2010). Honey Badgers have been able to maintain their presence and dominant nature within their habitats as a result of successfully transmitting traits from parent to child. As can seen from Honey Badgers consistent size and cognitive abilities, the animal is capable of genetically passing it successful traits.
What had resulted over time are the Honey Badger’s current traits, which have largely determined the third condition of natural selection, reproductive success (Phelan, 2010). Honey Badgers are known to invest large amounts of parental care when raising their young. For 14 to 18 months, mothers take on the responsibilities of teaching their young how to hunt and survive within their habitat. The development of cubs is relatively slow. For the first two months of the Honey Badger’s life it is essentially blind. Mothers will keep their cub in burrows for a few days before picking up their child and carrying them to a new one. As the child develops, the mother will assist in t...
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...ning the entirety of animals back. This white fur helps the animal maintain a lower body temperature and reduce the amount of energy needed to maintain body temperature. This is essential for an animal that expends large amounts of energy throughout its life. The thick, tough, and loose skin is an imperative adaption when it comes to protection against larger predators. The fearless nature of the Honey Badger often results in confrontations with substantially larger animals. The evolved skin of the animal acts a mechanism to reduce the larger animals ability to grab the Honey Badger, which would inhibit its agility. Honey Badgers have been know to utilize this tool by charging predators with the back side of their necks. In doing this, the Honey Badger reduces the predator’s ability to grab it and also acts as a shield to protect other weapons the Honey Badger has.
Broad, K.D, J.P Curley, and E.B Keverne. "Mother–infant Bonding and the Evolution of Mammalian Social Relationships." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Royal Society, 2014. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.
...his builds a relationship between the two causing the predator to consume its meat without looking away (Pollan 307). This causes that person to no want to know what they are eating because people are used to not knowing what they are eating.
In Mivart’s Genesis of Species, the author highlights the inconsistencies of Darwin’s natural selection theory. He supports his assertion by emphasizing how species placed in similar environments acquire different traits, questioning the long-term advantages of these evolved traits, and noting the logical inconsistencies of how traits can span in all directions.
Elizabeth Cashdan addresses the question of territoriality among human forager groups, specifically comparing four Bushman groups. She argues that territoriality should occur only in places where the benefits will outweigh the costs. Introducing the scientific definition of territoriality in animals, she first claims that animals tend to be the most territorial when they have adequate food and other resources. It is when there is a severe lack of or abundance of resources that animals are not territorial. With a lack of food, territoriality tends to waste too much energy. In the case of an abundance of food, it is not worth defending that which is plentiful for animals. She points out predictability as another environmental factor: if a resource is unpredictable, then it is not economical to defend it. It is only worthwhile to defend a territory if there is high probability that the resources will still be available when they are wanted. However, the costs and benefits of being territorial not only depend on the environment, but also on the species and its characteristics.
Natural selection is associated with the phrase “survival of the fittest.” This basically means that the fittest individuals can not only survive, but are also able to leave the most offspring. The selection of phenotypes affects the genotypes. For example, if tall pea plants are favored in the environment, then the tall pea plants would leave more offspring behind, meaning that the offspring will carry tall alleles. Phenotypes that are successful have the best adaptations (characteristics that help an individual to survive and reproduce) to their environment. These adaptation arise from the interactions with living and nonliving aspects of the environment. Some nonliving aspects of the environment are climate, water availability, and concentration of mineral sin the
However, the fragility of women and children has been overstated. Hunter-gatherer women are more than capable of performing the physical tasks of hunting. It also appears that infants brought along on a hunt experience little more danger than those taken on a plant gathering trip. Undoubtedly, there is increased risk, but it is either low enough that it does not affect infant mortality rates or the benefits are high enough to cancel out the danger. Simple biology does not fully account for the sexual division of labor, whether the issue is strength or
Some individuals have developed different traits to help them in the process of intra-sexual competition. The organisms with more distinctive traits have greater reproductive success. More genes of those traits are then ‘selected’ and are passed onto the offspring of the organisms. Throughout time variability in these traits becomes
According to Darwin and his theory on evolution, organisms are presented with nature’s challenge of environmental change. Those that possess the characteristics of adapting to such challenges are successful in leaving their genes behind and ensuring that their lineage will continue. It is natural selection, where nature can perform tiny to mass sporadic experiments on its organisms, and the results can be interesting from extinction to significant changes within a species.
In this lab, we explore the theory of optimal foraging and the theory of central place foraging using beavers as the model animal. Foraging refers to the mammalian behavior associated with searching for food. The optimal foraging theory assumes that animals feed in a way that maximizes their net rate of energy intake per unit time (Pyke et al. 1977). An animal may either maximize its daily energy intake (energy maximizer) or minimize the time spent feeding (time minimizer) in order to meet minimum requirements. Herbivores commonly behave as energy maximizers (Belovsky 1986) and accomplish this maximizing behavior by choosing food that is of high quality and has low-search and low-handling time (Pyke et al. 1977).
In both of these forms of selection, traits or characters are favoured that improve an individuals fitness, or in other words, the ability to pass on the most amount of genes to the next generation relative to other individuals in its population. The two major components that are necessary for an individual to carry on its genes to the next generation are survival and reproduction. As previously mentioned, males and to a lesser extent females, use traits in courtship that interfere with their survivorship. This means that a concession can be made between survivorship and mating success and that natural selection and sexual selection can apply conflicting selection tension on a
In order for natural selection to happen, the species has to have genetic variation. Genetic variation happens because of mutations and recombination of genes. Other processes that contribute are gene flow and genetic This process is seen mostly in agriculture. It is because of artificial selection that we have the domesticated plants and livestock that we eat. In the case of canines, they were originally bred to become working and hunting dogs in agriculture.
With the studies that Charles Darwin obtained he published his first work, “The Origin of Species.” In this book he explained how for millions of years animals, and plants have evolved to better help their existence. Darwin reasoned that these living things had gradually changed over time to help themselves. The changes that he found seemed to have been during the process of reproduction. The traits which would help them survive became a dominant trait, while the weaker traits became recessive. A good example of what Darwin was trying to explain is shown in giraffes. Long-necked giraffes could reach the food on the trees, while the short-necked giraffes couldn’t. Since long necks helped the giraffes eat, short-necked giraffes died off from hunger. Because of this long-necks became a dominant trait in giraffes. This is what Charles Darwin would later call natural selection.
In The Genetic Theory of Adaptation: A Brief History by H. Allen Orr the article discusses adaptation and how it was affected by micromutationism, phenotypic evolution, and sequence evolution and various models that arose through the years. Prior to getting into detail the article explains that “adaptation is not natural selection,” as emphasized in the 1930s by Ronald A. Fisher (Orr 1). It glosses over how evolutionary geneticists define and distinguish between the two terms and how the recent models on adaptation characterize evolutional patterns and fitness.
" Society & Animals 18.2 (2010): 183-203. Academic Search Premier -. EBSCO. Web. The Web. The Web.
Natural selection is based on the concept “survival of the fittest” where the most favourable individual best suited in the environment survive and pass on their genes for the next generation. Those individual who are less suited to the environment will die.