Living things change

Over the last several days we have looked at how random events, following a set of rules, given enough time will create patterns. And this is the general way in which living things change over time. In class today we tried to answer the question "Why do giraffes have long necks?" Students designed experiments to test their hypotheses and then we compared their expected evidence to actual evidence. What they found is that giraffe necks have a much different function than they expected! Animals adapt to their environment over time and these adaptations are rooted in our last unit, genetics.