Breeding organisms with specific traits to produce offspring with identical traits is called what?

• A. Cloning
• B. Natural Selection
• C. Artificial Selection
• D. Genetic Engineering

Answer: (C)

Artificial selection is about humans choosing which organisms reproduce to fix and spread desirable traits in a population. By selecting parents that express a trait we want and breeding them, those traits become more common in each new generation, leading to offspring that reliably show the trait. This is different from cloning, which makes exact genetic copies of one animal rather than shaping traits across generations. It’s also distinct from natural selection, where environmental pressures—not deliberate human choices—drive which traits become common. And it isn’t genetic engineering, which involves directly altering an organism’s DNA rather than selecting from naturally breeding populations.