In this video, we're going to begin our lesson on natural selection and evolution. But before we define natural selection and evolution, it's first helpful to define adaptation and fitness and how the adaptation of an organism to its environment helps to improve that organism's fitness in that environment. Now, you may have already noticed that living organisms throughout our world are very well suited to the environments that you can find them in, and this is due to adaptation. And so adaptation can be defined as the process that enables organisms to improve survival and reproduction in their environments. And so this leads us to the term fitness.
Now, the term fitness is used by scientists and biologists in a very different way than the term is used in our everyday language. And so, the term fitness, in this case, does not refer to how long you can run on a treadmill, how big your biceps are, or if you have a six-pack or not. Instead, fitness, in this case, refers to an organism's ability to survive and reproduce. And so, really, adaptation is the process that enables an organism to improve its fitness or ability to survive and reproduce in its environment.
And so, if we take a look at our image down below, what you'll notice is we have a variety of different types of organisms that are very well adapted to their environment and have very high fitness in their environments. And so, for example, penguins are very well adapted to cold snowy environments and so are polar bears. However, camels are very well adapted and have high fitness in hot and dry climates. Now here, this looks like a leaf. However, what you'll notice is that this is actually an insect that has adapted to its environment, and so if we zoom in here, you'll be able to see this insect a little better. Now, snakes are also very well adapted to their environments as well, and so adaptation is really just a process that enables organisms to improve their fitness.
And so, this here concludes our brief introduction to adaptation and how it improves fitness, and in our next video, we'll be able to talk more about natural selection and evolution. And so, I'll see you all in that video.