Insect Adaptations
Adaptation and evolution in insects: peppered moths as a famous example of natural selection (dark moths survived better on soot-covered trees during the Industrial Revolution). Stick insects evolved to look like twigs. Ant-mimicking spiders evolved to fool predators. How small changes over many generations lead to remarkable disguises.
What a learner can do afterwards
- Retell the peppered moth story and explain how the environment changed which colour moth survived best
- Describe how a stick insect's body shape is an adaptation that helps it avoid being eaten
- Explain that adaptations develop over many generations through natural selection, not during one insect's lifetime
The lesson
You already know that camouflage and mimicry help insects hide from predators. But an insect does not invent its own disguise. These tricks build up slowly, over many, many generations. This slow build-up is called adaptation.
During the Industrial Revolution, factory smoke covered tree trunks in England with black soot. Peppered moths came in two colours: pale and speckled, or dark. Once the soot turned the bark black, pale moths stood out and birds ate more of them. Dark moths blended in and survived to have babies. Over many generations, dark moths became the common colour.
Some spiders have adapted to look like ants. Ants taste bad to many predators, so predators tend to leave them alone. A spider that looked slightly ant-like was less likely to get eaten. Over many generations, spiders adapted thinner bodies and even a fake antennae wave, enough to fool birds and other insects.
Adaptation does not happen inside one insect's lifetime. A moth cannot decide to turn dark, and a spider cannot decide to look like an ant. The colour or shape a baby insect gets depends on which parents survived to have babies, across many generations.
Adaptations like colour and body shape build up slowly over many generations of survival, not within one insect's life.
Watch it
Where it sits
This opens up
Nothing builds on it yet.
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.