Most people can survive at high altitudes for a short time because their bodies raise their levels of hemoglobin, a protein that transports oxygen in the blood. Breathing air that thin would cause most people to get sick, but Tibetans’ bodies have evolved changes in their body chemistry.
Tibetans thrive at altitudes where oxygen levels are up to 40 percent lower than at sea level. An example of biological adaptation can be seen in the bodies of people living at high altitudes, such as Tibet. They can adapt biologically, meaning they alter body functions. Organisms can adapt to an environment in different ways. This enables better survival and reproduction compared with other members of the species, leading to evolution. The idea of natural selection is that traits that can be passed down allow organisms to adapt to the environment better than other organisms of the same species.
In developing the theory of evolution by natural selection, Wallace and Darwin both went beyond simple adaptation by explaining how organisms adapt and evolve. Wallace believed that the evolution of organisms was connected in some way with adaptation of organisms to changing environmental conditions. Although scientists discussed adaptation prior to the 1800s, it was not until then that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace developed the theory of natural selection. In evolutionary theory, adaptation is the biological mechanism by which organisms adjust to new environments or to changes in their current environment.
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