--- title: Evolution simply: why living things change over many generations — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Evolution simply: why living things change over many generations», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Look at a litter of puppies: no two are exactly alike, because every baby gets a fresh shuffle of its par --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Evolution simply: why living things ch… # Evolution simply: why living things change over many generations Lesson 73 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 14 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/73-evolution-simply/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/0/) — Look at a litter of puppies: no two are exactly alike, because every baby gets a fresh shuffle of its parents' genes, the instructions for building a body. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/1/) — If some of those differences help an animal survive and raise more young, the next generation has a little more of them, and over thousands of generations small nudges add up to big changes; this is natural selection. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/2/) — Nobody chooses the change and no animal tries to change: dark moths were simply eaten less often on sooty trees, so more dark moths were left to have young. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/4/) — Babies get a mix of genes from both parents, and small new changes sometimes appear, so brothers and sisters differ; these differences are the raw material of evolution. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/5/) — In England in the 1800s soot blackened tree trunks, birds ate more pale peppered moths, and dark moths became common; after clean air laws in the 1950s and 1960s pale moths became common again. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/6/) — Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands have beaks suited to their food, and Peter and Rosemary Grant saw the average beak size change within a few years after a drought in 1977. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/7/) — All pet dogs come from wolves and are still one species; people choosing which dogs had puppies, called artificial selection, made chihuahuas and Great Danes in a few thousand years. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/8/) — Whales are mammals whose ancestors walked on land about 50 million years ago; their back legs shrank to small hidden bones, and their closest living land relative is the hippopotamus. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/10/) — Bacteria can divide as often as every 20 minutes, so a few tough survivors of antibiotics can multiply into resistant bacteria within days, which is why medicine must be taken exactly as the doctor says: stopping early can leave the toughest bacteria alive to multiply. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/11/) — Humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor from about 6 to 7 million years ago, so they are cousins; humans did not come from today's chimps. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/12/) — Polar bears evolved from brown bears within the last few hundred thousand years; their fur is made of clear hairs and their skin is black. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/13/) — Mexican tetra fish trapped in dark caves evolved to lose their eyes and colour, because eyes are useless in darkness and cost energy; they feel movements with sensors along their sides. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/14/) — Charles Darwin sailed on HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836 and gathered evidence for over 20 years before he published On the Origin of Species in 1859; Alfred Russel Wallace found the same idea on his own, and both were presented together in 1858. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/73-evolution-simply/15/) — Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi are all one species, bred by farmers from wild cabbage that grows on European coastal cliffs. - ← previous: [Staying healthy: germs, vaccines, sleep, food and exercise](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/72-staying-healthy/) - next →: [Fossils: how we know about life long ago](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/74-fossils-life-long-ago/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)