Were you born with that?

In class we have been talking about inherited traits, and adapted traits of animals. We have discussed why animals are born with certain traits, and how they may develop new traits in order to adapt to their environment. Here are the definitions we have been studying:

Traits

Traits are qualities, features or other things that distinguish the organism. Traits can include things like hair color, tooth shape, beak shape, bone size, or muscle structure. Traits come in two varieties: acquired and inherited.

Acquired Traits

Just like your uncle, animals can acquire useful abilities. These acquired traits can not be passed on genetically. You can't inherit your uncle's knowledge, skills, ideas or memories and it doesn't' work that way with other organisms either. Acquired traits include things such as calluses on fingers, larger muscle size from exercise or from avoiding predators. Behaviors that help an organism survive would also be considered acquired characteristics most of the time. Things like where to hide, what animals to hide from and other behavior like that. For plants acquired characteristics might include bending because of wind.

Inherited Traits

In organisms, inherited traits must come from a parent or other ancestor. A trait may seem to skip a generation or even two or three, but if a trait shows up it must have been present in an ancestor. Mutations are the exception to this rule. Inherited traits include things such as hair color, eye color, muscle structure, bone structure, and even features like the shape of a nose. Inheritable traits are traits that get passed down from generation to the next generation. This might include things like passing red hair down in a family. For animals it may include things like the stripes on a tiger, a skunks ability to spray, or the flavor of fruit from different apple trees. All plants and animals that reproduce pass on traits to their offspring. (utahscience.com)

After talking about the difference with you child visit http://www.animalgame.com/play/
. This fun game has you guess which animal they are describing using the animals inherited traits!