This is a cool example of how evolution works.

During the industrial revolution, coal powered plants turned tree trunks and nesting places of peppered moths darker. This led to a rapid increase in the proportion of dark (melanistic) moths, as they had better camouflage than their more light-colored family members and therefore less prone to be eaten by birds.

Today, the process in in reversal, as fewer plants are coal powered and three trunks are turning lighter again. See? Our mistakes can be repaired =p

Read about it here!

 

—–

Cook, Grant, Saccheri and Mallet (2012) “Selective bird predation on the peppered moth: the last experiment of Michael Majerus” http://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2011.1136