Peppered Moths: How to Play (2024)

FAQs

How to play peppered moth game? ›

Your role in the simulation is that of a predator. Guide the bird with the mouse to the moths. Click on the moth with the mouse to eat the moth. Every time you eat a moth, you will hear the crunch of an exoskeleton.

Expert-Verified Answer

The color of a peppered moth can affect its survival by making it more or less visible to predators, which can have a significant impact on the moth's ability to avoid being eaten and to reproduce.

While the typical peppered moth is light, and is given the name typica, some other moths of this species have dark, almost black, bodies. These moths are given the name carbonaria.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the black form of the peppered moth was rare. The first black specimen (of unknown origin) was collected before 1811, and kept in the University of Oxford.

Social Moth is a narrative platforming game where you play as Aletris, a socially anxious moth trying to outrun their anxiety.

For those who don't know, the peppered moth is a classroom example of evolution by natural selection occurring in recorded history. The color of this species changed from white to black over 100 years during Britain's industrial evolution to maximize camouflage.

British scientist Bernard Kettlewell tested his hypothesis about industrial melanism in the peppered moth through a series of field experiments. He released both light and dark (melanic) moths into polluted and unpolluted woodlands and observed their rates of predation.

Genetic Changes

Moths passed their color to the next generation. Eggs from light moths developed into light moths and dark moth eggs turned to dark adults. The dark color was caused by a mutation in the DNA of a single moth, and the mutated gene had been passed to all its offspring.

Predators of the peppered moth include flycatchers, nuthatches, and the European robin. Like most moths, peppered moths avoid predators that hunt in the daylight by flying at night and resting during the day. Any animal sitting still is harder to see than a moving one.

The ancestral form of the peppered moth (typica) is white with dark speckles but, after the Industrial Revolution, a darker form (carbonaria) became more common due to natural selection in sooty environments.

How did peppered moths get their name? ›

Peppered Moths are normally white with black speckles across the wings, giving it its name.

Other scientists studied peppered moths. However, Kettlewell was the one who proved light-colored moths were easier for predators, specifically birds, to spot against a dark, polluted background. That is what caused light-colored moth population to drastically decrease after the Industrial Revolution.

Coal burning released large amounts of smoke and smog into the surrounding environment. This left a layer of black soot on the once lighter-colored trees. The pollution also killed the light speckled colored lichens that grew on the tree trunks. The tree bark was now exposed and dark without the lichens.

But as the Industrial revolution began to really take off in the 1800s, pollution from the dense industrial smoke and soot killed off lichens and darkened tree trunks and walls in towns and cities. As a result, the paler moths became more visible to predators, while the darker variety became more camouflaged.

During the 1700s, the Peppered Moth was (and still is) widespread across the UK. Its name comes from the typical patterning of dark speckles across its white wings. This patterning meant the moth was very well camouflaged against the lichen-covered tree trunks of the mainly rural landscape of the time.

Peppered Moth Simulation - use paper to simulate how moths change over time. Modeling Natural Selection - use tools such as spoons to "capture" beans and determine the best adaptations.

Factories were built which pumped tons of black smoke and soot into the air. The leaves and bark of trees became covered with dark soot. During this time, scientists noticed that almost all the light gray moths had disappeared. Black moths became the most common peppered moths in England.