When different species inhabit similar environments, they face similar selection pressures, or use parts of their bodies to perform similar functions. These similarities can cause the species to evolve similar traits, in a process called convergent evolution. From living in the cold, watery, arctic regions, where most of the food exists underwater, penguins and killer whales have evolved some similar : both are streamlined to help them swim more quickly underwater, both have layers of fat to keep them warm, both have similar white-and-black coloration that helps them to avoid detection, and both have developed fins (or flippers) to them through the water. All of these similar traits are examples of analogous traits, which are the product of convergent evolution.

 

    Convergent evolution sounds as if it is the opposite of divergent evolution, but that isn’t actually true. Convergent evolution is only superficial. From the outside, the fin of a whale may look like the flipper of a penguin, but the bone structure of a whale fin is still more similar to the limbs of other mammals than it is to the structure of penguin flippers. More importantly, convergent evolution never results in two species gaining the ability to interbreed; convergent evolution can’t take two species and turn them into one