Lamarckism

High school (ages 12+)
History & Culture

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/lamarckism

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the proponent?Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
2. What is the central tenet?Inheritance of acquired characteristics
3. How did Lamarck explain giraffes getting long necks?He said giraffes stretched their necks to reach leaves, and over many generations those stretched necks were passed on, making modern giraffes taller.
4. Why did scientists stop believing in Lamarckism?Experiments like Weismann's mouse tails and the discovery of DNA showed that traits made during life are not passed to babies.

Lamarckism: An evolutionary theory proposing that traits acquired during an organism's lifetime are heritable by its offspring.
Acquired Characteristics: Phenotypic traits developed by an organism during its life due to environmental interaction or behavior.
Natural Selection: The process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring.
Epigenetics: The study of heritable changes in gene expression that do not involve alterations to the DNA sequence itself.