Hide and Seek
You are the bird, and you are the reason they change
be the bird, and watch the moths you cannot find take over the whole tree
what this teaches: camouflage, natural selection, traits pass to offspring, the environment decides who survives
What you'll learn
- That the moths in a population are not all the same — some are pale, some are dark, most are in between
- That a baby moth comes out looking a lot like its parent, but never exactly
- That whichever moths survive are the ones that get to pass their colour on
- That this is enough, on its own, to change a whole population in a handful of generations — nobody has to plan it
- That the environment is what decides which colour wins, so when the bark changes, the population follows it
How to play
- Press Start hunting and tap every moth you can spot before the ten seconds run out.
- Look at the rings when time is up — those are the ones that got away, and those are the ones that have babies.
- Press Next round and do it again. Watch the graph underneath slide towards the bark line.
- Once they are hard to find, pull the factory lever, darken the bark, and see what that does to them.
FAQ
What age is this for?
About 6 and up. There is nothing to read on the bark and nothing to work out — a small child can tap moths and feel the game getting harder, while an older one can watch the graph and follow exactly why.
Is the game secretly making it harder as I go?
No, and that is the whole point. Nothing anywhere adjusts the difficulty. The moths simply get harder to see because you kept eating the easy ones, and the ones you left behind are the ones that had babies. The difficulty is the lesson.
What is the factory lever about?
It is the real story of the peppered moth. When British factories covered the trees in soot, the pale moths that had been perfectly hidden suddenly stood out, and dark moths took over within a few decades. Pull the lever and you get the same reversal in about a minute.
Do the moths change colour?
Never. No moth in this game ever changes colour — check one and it is the same shade it hatched as. What changes is which moths are still alive to have babies, and that is a completely different thing. It is the difference nearly every explanation of evolution gets muddled.
For parents and teachers
The moment to wait for is the third or fourth round, when your child starts squinting and says the game is cheating. It isn't — they made it hard, one tap at a time, and the graph along the bottom is the proof. That is worth pausing on, because 'I did this without meaning to' is the single hardest idea in evolution and most adults never get it either. Then pull the factory lever together. Supports NGSS 3-LS4-2, 3-LS4-3 and MS-LS4-4.
Who Eats Whom
Max's Snap Lab
Max's Snowflake Lab