Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the French naturalist proposed that evolution is the result of the activities of the organisms. He stated that every animal or plant undergoes some changes in its lifespan and these changes are transferred to the next generation and such changes occur in subsequent generations too. Lamarck proposed that morphological changes that take place in living organisms result in evolution and the cause of these morphological changes is activities or laziness of that organism. He called this concept the principle of ‘use or disuse of organs’. It is seen that living organisms have the ability to transfer the characters that are acquired to the next generation and this is known as the ancestry of acquired characters. Take the example of the neck of the giraffe It is believed that it became too long as a result of the giraffes extending their neck for several generations to browse on leaves. This is an example of ‘acquired characters’ that are transferred from one to another generation. This is also known as the theory of inheritance of acquired characters or Lamarckism. However, while development of organs due to specific activities or their degeneration due to no use at all was widely accepted, the transfer of those characters from generation to generation. For the reason that it was verified many times, the changes brought in us are not transferred to the next generation and so this disproved Lamarck’s theory.
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