What are some similarities and differences between Lamarck and Darwins ideas about how evolution takes place?
Lamarck recognized that animals are not fixed entities because he noticed they have traits that help them cope with their environment. So he recognized that species change just like Darwin. But Lamarck thought that organisms undergo changes within their own lifetime, and that such “acquired characteristics” would then be passed to their offspring. The classic example is the giraffe: he supposed that a giraffe might increase its neck length by some amount as it stretched for food in tree branches, and that the change would happen in its lifetime. Those acquired traits would then be passed to the subsequent generation, which would then have a longer neck than the previous generation. Darwin proved him wrong by stating that the whole species adapts through natural selection. So individual change does not affect the species. Darwin also recognized different species could have common ancestors. In the giraffe example, Darwin recognized different giraffes had different neck lengths. In place
