Exploring a Change in Views on the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics Can a giraffe make its neck longer by stretching to reach higher branches? Most people today would laugh and say "of course not", but there was a time when scientists thought it was possible for an animal to acquire such complex characteristics. The idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, introduced by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, is an evolutionary process that involves organisms changing their phenotypic …showed first 75 words of 1080 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1080 total…Works Cited Avital, Eytan, Eva Jablonka, and Marion J. Lamb. 1998. `Lamarckian' mechanisms in darwinian evolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. May, Volume 13, Issue 5, Pages 206-210. Brodie III, Edmund D., James M. Cheverud, Allen J. Moore, Michael J. Wade, and Jason B. Wolf. 1998. Evolutionary consequences of indirect genetic effects. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. February, Volume 13, Issue 2, Pages 64-69. Darwin, Charles. 1859. On The Origin of Species. Murray, London. Price, Peter W.1996. Biological Evolution. Saunders College Publishing.