The term often leads into confusion, however, since international compact cars are somewhat larger than their North American equivalents, mostly because no supermini/subcompact size is manufactured by American, Mexican and Canadian car makers up to date.
By the late 1860's, Darwin came to describe this process as the survival of the fittest. This is very different from Lamarck's incorrect idea that the environment altered the shape of individuals and that these acquired changes were then inherited.
For other uses, see Survival of the fittest (disambiguation). Herbert Spencer coined the phrase survival of the fittest. Survival of the fittest is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success.