ADAPTATION LAB ACTIVITY

Name____________________________________ Date: _______________ Lab Table: ______
ADAPTATION LAB ACTIVITY
ADAPTATION: physical trait of an organism that aids its chances of survival thereby increasing its "fitness"
to the environment.
Objective: to observe the importance of an opposable thumb as an adaptation.
Directions:
1. At your lab table, assign these "jobs":
Timer
Recorder
No opposable thumb (the teacher will come and use masking tape to do this)
Opposable thumb - may be more than 1 student per group
2. Have the appropriate student (check the Data Table to see if your group has a thumb or no thumb doing
that particular task) perform the following tasks, timing them and recording the results.
A. Transfer ten M&M's (one at a time) from one container to another.
B. Tie your shoe.
C. Pick up and unzip a backpack.
D. Pick up and open a book to page 50.
E. Text (permission granted) the message “biology” to one of your partners.
F. Hit a nail on the head and drive it all the way into a board.
3. Have the recorder enter the results from your group into the class data table. Round to the nearest 10 th .
4. Copy all results from the class data table and include them below.
Graphing
1. The teacher will assign one task to graph. You must decide on the best type of graph to use.
Analysis
2. Answer the Discussion Questions in complete sentence answers.
3. For your Conclusion, write one statement summarizing your graphed data: "According to our data…"
4. Write an Error Analysis and list at least 3 parts of this activity that prevent it from being "well
controlled." In other words, what are 3 additional variables that may have been different during this lab?
Data Table: TIME ON TASK = has an opposable thumb *=has no thumb
Task
A Pick up M&Ms (one at a time)
Team Team Team Team Team Team Team Team
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
* * * *
B Tie Your Shoe * * * *
C Unzip a backpack
* * * *
D Open a book to pg. 50 * * * *
E Text message
* * * *
F Drive a nail into a board * * * *

Graph of one task: Remember to include proper elements of every graph.
Identify the following elements of this experiment:
1. Control group? ________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Experimental group? ___________________________________________________________________________________
3. Independent variable? __________________________________________________________________________________
4. Dependent variable? ___________________________________________________________________________________
Discussion Questions: Best writing skills
1. Based on your observations during class, give three specific examples of ways in which this adaptation (an opposable thumb)
would aid in the survival of a non-human Primate in a natural environment.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Explain how this adaptation, along with larger brain capacity, gives Homo sapiens unique communication capabilities.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Conclusion: According to our data _______________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Error Analysis:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________