Imagine a supermarket, which is totally messy.

Everything is on the floor and mixed randomly.

And even worse:

All the signs are missing!

How could we put order to this?

Of course, all the objects

have features in common,

but which are the most important?

We could guess forever, or we could take a better look at the objects

we have. If we look at what they have to show us, we will see a pattern:

The pattern of purpose. And following this pattern we can order the

objects according to their purpose.

Scientists do something similar, not with objects, but with living beings:

animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and anything that lives or has lived.

Living beings also have a pattern: The pattern of evolution. Nature is

always putting challenges to them, so they adapt their behavior, skills,

shape, physiology, and even internal chemistry, to better fit in the always

changing environment. Sometimes a simple strategy is enough, and

sometimes something a bit more elaborate is required.

The science in charge of classifying them is called Taxonomy.

But why such strange names?

Well, we have lots of languages in the world, so lots of names for the same thing.

To avoid confusion, scientists decided to use a common language, Latin.

Scientists also needed to be specific. It was not enough to say "Red Ant" when you have sixteen types of red ants, so they decided to give a first name and a last name to each creature.

The first name is the Genus, a group of creatures with a distinctive characteristic in common.

For example, a group of scorpions called Androctonus or the "Mankiller" because of the power of their venom.

The last name is the characteristic that distinguishes this creature from the rest of the group. It could be its color, size, the place in which you can find it, or anything.

In this case, this scorpion is from Morocco.  So, it was called Androctonus marrocanus or The Mankiller from Morocco.

How does it work?

When a species faces a new threat, some of them try to use the same strategies as before, but a few others try something new. So, the population divides.

Sometimes part of the species becomes extinct because of these dangers.

Sometimes the new population strategy fails and those creatures that adopted it go extinct.

And sometimes both survive, but the new population now looks different.

They now have new tools for survival. Something as little as changing the color or size is sometimes enough to give that creature an advantage over its brothers and sisters.

This is how new species are born through evolution.