What Charles Darwin Never Knew

Extra Credit #2: What Charles Darwin Never Knew

This stunning video of PBS NOVA begins by mentioning Charles Darwin’s work on evolutionary theory, which apparently has been the base for the various contemporary evolutionary theories. The narrator emphasizes the great diversity of living creatures in the earth. For instance, there are approximately nine thousands species of birds, three hundred fifty thousand kinds of beetles. And the narrator addresses the variety of the species to refer back to Charles Darwin, who provided a good stand for answering such a variety of living creatures. Still, the narrator pulls back by saying that there are still many questions unanswered due to complexity of evolution.

In the video, Carroll states that Darwin did not understand the mechanics of evolution, which are the physical forces that actually transform the appearance of the species. But now, with many scientific findings and research, the narrator states that we have better understanding of how evolution works and clearly look into its process. To back up this statement, the video mentions two remarkable studies by Nachman and Carroll. Nachman asserts that whenever there was an error in the process when the sequences of DNA form genes, mutation and variation occurs, which we could view as a type of an evolution. In order to underpin his claim, Nachman had carried out an experiment comparing mice’s different genomes and gene arrangements; then, he concluded that mutation led to an evolution.

Carroll’s studies on evolution are even more interesting because it states that many of the human genes are identical to those of other animals. Sean Carroll mostly focused on fruit flies to find out why one species of fruit fly has a dark spot on its wings while the other specie did not have the spot. This fruit fly experiment also answered how creatures transformed into other creatures. For example, the video mentions how snakes