Evolution in the Life & Death of Animals
For if every year each pair of animals or each plant produces only ten young animals or plants, and this is very far below the average, and if the adult life of these is taken at ten years, again below the average of the higher plants and animals, then, unless some of the parents die, the whole of the offspring must die off every year; or, in other words, only as many young can survive as are necessary to replace the old ones that die. Hence the deaths must always (on the average and in the long run) equal the births. This terrible yearly demise is an absolutely certain fact, and it is said to be due to the competition for existence. This competition is manifold in its nature. Individuals of the same species competition together for food, for light, for moisture; they competition also against other species having the same wants; they competition against every kind of enemy, from parasitic worms and insects up to carnivorous animals; and there is a continual competition with the forces of nature–frosts, rains, droughts, floods, and tempests.
These varied causes of destruction may be seen constantly at work by any one who looks for them. They act from the moment of birth, being more especially destructive to the young; and, as only one in ten or fifty or a thousand (according to the rate of increase of the particular species) can possibly come to the full breeding age, we feel compelled to ask ourselves: What determines the nine or the forty-nine or the nine hundred and ninety-nine, as the case may be, which die, and the one which survives? Darwin calls this process of extermination one of “natural selection”–that is, by this process nature weeds out the weak, the unhealthy, the non adapted, the imperfect in any way.
And what do we mean by non-adapted? In engineering we can think of the automobile replacing the railroad as the primary means of transportation. The maladapted animal would be one who is not as suited to surviving the current conditions. In other words, what might have been good for dinosaurs would not necessarily be good for mammals. All of this is confronted in the evolution creationism controversy debate being waged between science and the churches.
Tags:creationism, evolution