The Greatest Show on Earth

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Juliana Dean Anthropology 1 Professor Merrifield 14 October 2011 The Greatest Show On Earth “The ‘theory’ of evolution is actually a fact.” Dr. Richard Dawkins presents this evidence for evolution in his New York Times bestselling book The Greatest Show On Earth. Within this evidence, Dawkins presents a number of arguments and examples to inform the “history-deniers” that evolution is indeed a fact. Through natural selection different species have survived, evolved, and than later extinct. After reading Richard Dawkins book, it becomes very clear that watching our species evolve has definitely been “the greatest show on earth”. Dawkins has one main point throughout the entire book, which is evolution through the process of natural selection. Natural selection was a process created by Charles Darwin, which states that “nature selects” what species are going to survive. Factors in the environment determine which traits are needed in order for each different species to survive. If you do not have the necessary traits, then you are likely to die off and therefore unable to reproduce to keep your specie going. However, if you do obtain the necessary traits, then these particular traits will be kept within the gene pool, and reproduction will continue keep these beneficial traits around. The theory of artificial selection is very similar to natural selection, however ironically some might call it unnatural selection. It is basically the process of humans breeding plants and animals together in order to either obtain or combine certain traits that wouldn’t normally combine in nature. This is also known as selective breeding which Happens with a lot of dogs. Not only are there a variety of different types of dogs already, but breading them together creates an even bigger number. Dawkins brings up many examples in
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