KEAM Lamarckism — practice questions

Explore 2 free Lamarckism questions in KEAM Biology. Open each question or exercise to read its content, reference answers and available explanation.

Practise Lamarckism with Quill →

Lamarckism questions and exercises with answers

Showing questions 1–2 of 2.

The **inheritance of acquired characters** (e.g. organs become stronger through use, weaker through disuse) was the theory of:Read the answer and worked solution →Weismann's experiment of cutting rat tails for 21 generations disproved the theory of:Read the answer and worked solution →

Worked practice questions

The inheritance of acquired characters (e.g. organs become stronger through use, weaker through disuse) was the theory of:

Darwin
Lamarck (1809)
Wallace
Hugo de Vries

Show answer and solution

Correct answer: B. Lamarck (1809)

Lamarck (1809) proposed that organs change with use/disuse and that acquired characters are passed to offspring. Weismann disproved it by cutting rat tails for 21 generations without observing inherited tail shortening.

Open this question →

Weismann's experiment of cutting rat tails for 21 generations disproved the theory of:

Darwinism
Lamarckism (inheritance of acquired characters)
Mutation theory
Modern synthesis

Show answer and solution

Correct answer: B. Lamarckism (inheritance of acquired characters)

Weismann cut tails of rats for 21 successive generations tail length never decreased. He concluded somatic changes (somatoplasm) are NOT inherited — only germ-line (germplasm) changes pass to offspring. This refuted Lamarck's inheritance of acquired characters.