The statement is not from a children’s book, the content is. I’ve learned a lot of history from teaching my kids too. It’s amazing what you don’t learn in school the first time around.
Yeah, my special power to delete spam does not get me VIP access to a special team of science consultants. But… the BioLogos website is full of information on this very topic, so you can read for yourself where it is laid out by scientists for adults: http://biologos.org/questions/what-is-evolution
I was talking about genetic adaptation over time, not some behavioral adaptation of an individual or group within one generation. Populations adapt genetically over multiple generations. Individuals don’t genetically adapt, no matter how selfish or selfless they are. It’s not a choice. I don’t disagree that communities cooperate for survival, but then we aren’t talking about genetics anymore, we’re talking about social behavior of animals.
For example, where we normally live in the mountains of Mexico, meat is scarce and dogs are fed old tortillas. Biologically, dogs are carnivores, but certain individual dogs are able to digest and get the necessary nutrients for survival from corn. Those dogs survive. The dogs that are born and can’t eat corn die as puppies. No individual dog is saying, “I want to survive. I will adapt to this situation and learn to like stale tortillas.” Even if the mama dogs want to share their tortillas with their babies, if the babies can’t digest it, they will not survive to reproduce. Either their biology can handle it or it can’t. Over many generations the dog population in that area has a much higher concentration of corn digesting dogs in it than in populations of dogs where meat is available.