Amanda Scott

And there were the moths that I remember even when I was a student, we were learning about the moths that were growing darker because they were camouflaging against soot-covered buildings in industrial Britain.

And then we stopped...

Polluting as badly with salt was polluted with other things instead.

And now the moths are growing lighter again.

But that's just sheer selection pressure.

The ones that are least visible are the ones that stay alive to produce the next generation.

But it seemed to me that there was some plasticity within generations, that some things are...

evolving behaviors that are maintaining life like the crows that are beginning to build nests out of the anti-bird stuff we put anti-bird stuff on buildings humans do that i mean it's bad enough when we put anti-human things on buildings but now we're putting spikes on that are meant to deter the birds and the birds are actually ripping them up and turning into nests and you think yes go crows well done

And that seems that some of that is, it's adaptive behaviour, a bit like tits learning to open up in the days when we used to put milk bottles on people's doorsteps.

I used to do a milk round when I was a kid and you'd put the milk bottles on the doorsteps and then people would put out the early equivalent of yoghurt pots to put over them because the tits had learned to open them up and drink the cream.

And it's just a learning thing.

And then it spreads in the population and it's an adaptive learning rather than a genetic selection.

And both of these seem to be happening

in a mosaic in concert.

Yes.

Yes, not to fly.

I didn't know that.

It's so exciting.

Yeah, they just evolved feathers to be warmer.

And then they discovered that flight was possible.