I found this little Youtube video on natural selection that I thought would be a good tool for reviewing and learning Darwin's theory of natural selection. This video does a great job of breaking down the theory and explaining how Darwin came to this understanding of nature.
Natural selection essentially states that environmental conditions select for specific traits over others, allowing individuals that possess those traits to produce more offspring than others in the population without those traits. Individuals within a population that have traits that are adapted well to their environmental conditions are considered to possess "fitness."
I am sure many of you have heard the phrase "survival of the fittest," which was coined not by Darwin, but his one of his contemporaries, Herbert Spencer. Another article, Why survival of the fittest is wrong, explains why this phrase does not accurately describe the theory of natural selection. It is not that you have to be the BEST to be fit, you just have to be able to survive long enough to reproduce and ensure the survival of your offspring. So, in other words, its not that you have to be the fastest to escape a hungry bear, you just need to NOT be the slowest!
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