Natural Selection and the Rock Pocket Mouse — HHMI BioInteractive Video

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How quickly can natural selection work? “The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection and Adaptation” tells the story of a living example of Darwin’s process of natural selection and shows how quickly a trait can spread through a population when natural selective pressure is strong.

The rock pocket mouse shows how different genetic changes can lead to the same adaptation — a coat color that hides the rock pocket mice from predators, such as owls. Explore a classic case study in natural selection and evolution with your science students.

Free classroom resources supporting this short film can be found at http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/making-fittest-natural-selection-and-adaptation

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45 Comments

  1. My schools assignment question

    Explain how natural selection caused a change in these organisms over time.

    Natural selection is due to the change of environment, in this case, the predators were able to see the mice on the lava flow, so a random mutation was deemed favorable by survival rates, while the light mice got picked off the dark mice thrived and spreaded there genes to their offspring, and overtime dark mice ruled on the lava flows and light mice on the desert sands.

  2. What is the percentage of black mice in a population on predominately brown surface! I imagine their percent of random mutations must be small but more importantly their percent of survival is even smaller.

  3. Negative video, not a vegan here but i can see where this can be uncomfortable for someone who does not eat meat. A mouse getting brutally torn apart by an owl without a warning??? R u kidding me? This is disgusting and can’t believe the publisher of this vid did not upload a blood warning. Disrespectful to the plant based community who would rather not see an animal being killed

  4. Despite their name, pocket mice are not mice at all, they are members of the family Heteromyidae, which also includes the kangaroo rats and kangaroo mice, additionally heteromyids are the smallest rodents belonging to the suborder Sciuromorpha, meaning pocket mice are also more closely related to squirrels, beavers, and gophers than they are to mice, pocket mice only superficially resemble mice due to convergent evolution.

  5. This is a great video, thank you for uploading this. It is the most simple and to-the-point explanation of natural selection there is, I use this every year with my class when teaching NS. Cheers!

  6. I need to know whats in the the chest behind the man in the blue shirt. I could be nothing. Absolutely nothing. But not knowing is killing me. I need to know. SHOW US THE BOX YOU COWARD! WHAT ARE YOU HIDING?!

  7. It teaches humans the association of race and how diminutive the establishment of culture is when your in nature and need to adapt… nature accepts, divides, and procreates all living things and their variants much like racial divides and how people manufacture culture based on appearance rather than precedence.

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