Explain the approaches to evolution taken by Erasmus Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
Evolution in the beginning was not understood by many. Erasmus Darwin the grandfather of Darwin thought that God had created life on earth and made all the organisms. He then left the living organism to live on their own and did not interfere. The organism changed according to their environment with respect to the nature.
Lamarck was another naturalist who gave his theory of evolution. He suggested that living organism changed according to their surroundings. Their physical features get affected by their geographical location.
Lamarck emphasized on this theory that when animals live in a particular habitat, they start to acquire traits best suited for that place. He gave the example of giraffes, he said that the tall neck of a giraffe has been acquired over a period of time.
According to him, the giraffe ate leaves from tall trees. Due to the inability of the giraffe to reach at such great heights, he had to reach out using its neck to comfortably eat the leaves.
Going by this theory of Lamarck, giraffes acquired the long neck, so that it could reach up to the heights of tall plants. Lamarck suggested these traits were then inherited by the next generations.