Arthur Cain facts for kids

Arthur James Cain (born July 25, 1921 – died August 20, 1999) was a British scientist who studied evolutionary biology and ecology. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989, which is a very high honor for scientists in the UK.

Early Life and Military Service

Arthur James Cain was a very bright student. In 1939, he won a special scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, a famous university. He studied zoology, which is the study of animals, and graduated with top honors in 1941.

In December 1941, during World War II, Cain joined the British Army. He became an officer in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, which deals with engineering. Later, he moved to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (R.E.M.E.). He was promoted to captain in 1942.

After the war, in November 1945, Cain left the military. He went back to Oxford University to continue his research in zoology. He became a demonstrator (like a teaching assistant) in 1946 and earned his Master's degree in 1947. From 1949 to 1964, he worked as a university lecturer, teaching about how animals are classified.

Scientific Career

Cain was very interested in how living things change over time (evolution). He also studied how animals interact with their environment (ecology) and how different types of animals are related (taxonomy).

One of his most famous studies was with P.M. Sheppard. They looked at the colors and patterns on the shells of snails, especially a type called Cepaea nemoralis. They showed that predators, like birds, would eat snails that stood out, proving that natural selection was at work. This means that snails with colors that blended in better with their surroundings were more likely to survive and pass on their genes. Their work is now considered a classic example of how evolution happens in nature.

Cain also studied how shell shapes changed over time. He even used very old, sub-fossil snail shells to see how populations changed through history.

He also helped explain important ideas in taxonomy, which is the science of naming and classifying living things. He looked at how we decide if different groups of animals are related and how to classify them.

In 1954, Cain became the Curator of the Zoological Collections at the Oxford University Museum. This meant he was in charge of all the animal specimens there. He held this job for ten years while also teaching. In 1964, he became a professor of zoology at the University of Manchester. Later, in 1968, he moved to the University of Liverpool as a professor. He retired in 1989.

Thoughts on Natural Selection

Later in his life, Arthur Cain shared his memories about how scientists in Oxford thought about natural selection before World War II. At that time, many scientists were doubtful about how important natural selection really was.

For example, Charles Sutherland Elton, a famous ecologist, pointed out that Arctic foxes can be white in winter or a bluish-brown color. Even though white helps them hide in the snow, the blue type is more common in places like Iceland. Elton and others thought this showed that not everything could be explained by natural selection.

Cain felt that many scientists of that time didn't truly understand how natural selection worked. He believed they often decided something was "non-adaptive" (meaning it didn't help an animal survive) without enough proof. He said:

"What I wanted to know from all these great people was, how exactly did they know that a character was non-adaptive or neutral? They didn't know, and they couldn't know."

This thinking pushed Cain to do his own research on evolution in nature. He wanted to show how natural selection really shaped living things.

However, some scientists, like E.B. Ford, understood that even if a trait itself didn't seem to help survival, the genes for that trait might also affect other traits that were important for survival. Ford understood that many different traits could be linked together by genes. Cain's own research on snails also showed that different environments could lead to different traits being favored, keeping a variety of colors and patterns within a species.