Evolution
The Venus Flytrap's evolution was the product of a "Hobson's choice" in which plants that did not evolve nutrient-capturing abilities in nitrogen and phosphorus-poor environments would not have survived. Their carnivorous traps were evolutionarily selected to allow these organisms to survive their harsh environments.
Read more about this topic: Venus Flytrap
Famous quotes containing the word evolution:
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)
“The evolution of humans can not only be seen as the grand total of their wars, it is also defined by the evolution of the human mind and the development of the human consciousness.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“The evolution of a highly destined society must be moral; it must run in the grooves of the celestial wheels.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)