A mouse loses its tail in an encounter with a cat but surviv

A mouse loses its tail in an encounter with a cat, but survived the encounter to successfully reproduce. Could this incident result in evolutionary change in the mouse\'s offspring? explain the answer with details.

Solution

No, this incident is not going to result in evolutionary change in the mouse\'s offspring after reproduction because any evolutionary change is mainly due to natural selection of certain traits, in which growth of tail is essential mouse thermoregulatory function (a major heat -loss organ). Even though mouse lost its tail & survived when encountering cat, it is essential to have tail to main thermoregulatory function. The evolution is mainly depends on the \"environmental factors\", mutations in the individual cellular genome or migration or genetic drift. Individuals often develop favorable traits via natural selection & genetic variations in the successive generations with evolution of new traits in the new species as an evolutionary adaptation to attain adequate offspring fitness and to struggle for the existence. According to Darwin theory of natural selection, sexual selection is the phenomenon that drives the evolution of life. Reproductive capability tasks plays an important stronger role to produce the progeny with strong survival rate of the fittest is crucial in the natural selection. The evolution of these offspring with higher fitness to survive in the environment is done through natural selection therefore these species will gain \"disease resistant features & high reproductive fitness\" and genomic feature to eliminate deleterious alleles (induced by mutations) via natural selection. Those species, which can withstand and sustain to this environment, those will survive for a period by getting nurture from the nature. Natural selection is always occurs in any mouse population if there are genetic variation for a trait in that population followed by heritability of that specific trait to the offspring as an evolutionary adaptation. The encounter with cat and lose of mouse tail is going to induce any genetic variation or mutational genetic alteration because mutations also induce natural selection and evolution of new traits