1

Natural Selection in Utensil Birds

Problem
In an area of Cobb County (under a set of power lines) lives a species of birds known as the
utensil birds. These birds live off of the colorful food in the area. However, there is not
enough food for all of them to survive, so they are in constant competition. Most of the utensil
birds have 2 inside toes, but we are starting to see some mutations in the region where some
birds have different toe traits. Examples are shown below.

Materials
 One of the utensils
 A cup to be used as the stomach

Procedure
1.) You will be given a utensil and you are to use that utensil to obtain your food
source (colored blocks) over a 20 second time period.

2.) We will count our food source and decide as a class how much food was needed in
order to survive.

3.) Those that have obtained enough food will survive and reproduce their trait.

4.) Those that do not receive enough food will of course die, and instead become a
part of the reproducing generation.

5.) This will continue for 4 generations and we will record this information in our data
table.
 2
Name:_________________________________ Date:_______ Block:__

Data Table

Generation 2-Inside 2-Outside 4-Prong Spoon

Prong Prong Regular Fork
1
2
3
4

Bar Graph of Generation vs. Number of Birds

Number of Birds

Fork
Fork

Spoon
2 Inside
2 Outside
Spoon
2 Inside
2 Outside
Spoon
2 Inside
2 Outside

Spoon
2 Outside
Fork
2 Inside
Fork

Gen. 1 Gen. 2 Gen. 3 Gen. 4

 3
Analysis Questions

1. What are the plus/minus numbers for each utensil?

2. Use your knowledge of natural selection to explain what happened to each population of
birds over the four generations?

3. What do you think will happen to each type of bird over 10 to 20 generations? Why?

4. What was the most successful bird and why do you think they were more successful?

5. Did the population of birds evolve over the three generations? Explain.

6. What are different factors the effect the overall success of these organisms?