A tale of shipwreck and delicious beans
Reproduced from Tieman & Haxer, 2007
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Even in the same species, there are
differences between individuals
Some variations are good, some are not so
good.
One kind of good variation helps organisms
avoid being preyed upon
The environment helps determine what a
“good variation” is.
Captain Dan and his crew were sailing from
South America to Australia when they
encountered a severe storm. The ship tossed
in the sea for days before coming to rest on
an island somewhere in the South Pacific. The
ship was badly damaged and most of the
supplies had fallen overboard during the
storm. Dan and his crew were very hungry
and the island didn’t promise much in the
way of food.
After looking around, the crew discovered
tiny organisms hiding in the grass. They
named them Jelly bellicus because the
organisms reminded them of a sweet treat
back home. Upon closer inspection the crew
realized that there were eight different
varieties of Jelly bellicus. The crew began
gobbling up as many of the delicious critters
as they could find.
The crew split into three groups to find food
on the island. The ground looked very
different from one part of the island to the
next.
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Eight different specimens
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White
White w/spots
Red
Pink w/spots
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Tan w/spots
Light brown w/spots
Dark brown w/spots
Black
Red and dusty
Beige and fluffy
Grey and bumpy
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Arrange into three groups with appx equal
numbers
Each group gets a bag of jelly beans
In each bag:
◦ 10 of each colour
◦ 80 beans total
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Dump the bag of beans into the terrain and
mix them up
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Each crew member can only use one hand to
hunt
No picking up handfuls of terrain and sorting
through
Wait for the signal before hunting
All hunting stops when Captain Dan says so
Don’t actually eat the beans!
Ready?
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Record how many of each type of bean you
found.
Which beans were easier to find?
Which ones were harder to find?
Why?
As a group, decide which jelly bean is the
easiest, and which is the hardest to find.
Make sure to write it down.
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Red and Dusty Group
◦ Easiest bean – Red and
Pink
◦ Hardest bean – Tan
w/spots
Grey and Bumpy Group
◦ Easiest bean – Red
◦ Hardest bean - Black
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Beige and Fluffy Group
◦ Easiest bean – Black
◦ Hardest bean - Pink
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Different colours do better in different
environments, just like the beans.
What would happen to black rabbits in the
grass? Brown rabbits in the snow?
Good thing there are different colours!
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Hawks like to eat rabbits!
What might it look like to a hawk, way up high, to
see different colours of rabbits on the ground?
Will some be easier to see than others?
What might happen to the dark rabbits on the
green grass?
If all the dark rabbits get eaten, how can they
have dark babies?
There might not be very many dark rabbits left
on the green grass!
Connection to computer model (foxes and
rabbits)
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Mimicry – The red beans are poisonous!
◦ Kids will probably avoid the pink beans too
◦ Real-world connection to wasp mimics
◦ None of these insects can sting!
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Population Shift
◦ After first round of hunting, surviving beans
reproduce
◦ Have many rounds, many generations
◦ Represent results in bar graph
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Simpler variations
◦ Use only one type of terrain
 This will reduce complexity
◦ If you want to focus only on predation or selection
pressure
◦ Could work up to the different terrains and realworld connections
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Computer model
Writing activity
Multi-day activity?