Science
How does natural selection work?
Natural selection works because individuals with traits better suited to their environment tend to survive and reproduce more. Those helpful traits get passed on, so over many generations a population gradually adapts — the engine of evolution.
See it in motion.
Watch a 2-minute animated lesson that shows exactly how natural selection works.
Step by step
- 1Individuals vary in their inherited traits.
- 2Some traits help survival and reproduction.
- 3Those individuals pass on more of their genes.
- 4Over generations, the population adapts.
Frequently asked questions
- How does natural selection work?
- Individuals with advantageous traits survive and reproduce more, passing those traits on, so populations adapt over time.
- Is natural selection the same as evolution?
- It's the main mechanism of evolution — evolution is the change over time that natural selection drives.
- What is 'survival of the fittest'?
- A phrase for how the best-adapted individuals to an environment tend to survive and reproduce.