Seeing What Darwin Saw

This is a swallow-tailed gull, not a finch

(Reis) Today, on the island of Cerro Dragon in the Galapagos Archipelago, our great guides told us how the small changes in DNA and genes can make the reptiles, plants, mammals and insects adapt to fit the environment in which they are living. The key to adaptation is TIME. For a species to adapt to a certain environment, it happens over many generations. Take the Darwin Finches for example; their ancestors on land ate seeds. When they came to the Islands, they found none, or very little seeds. Some of the ones who found they could eat other things, survived. For the others it was Game Over. The survivors passed their genes onto the next generations. The sons and daughters found they had the ability to eat non-seed meals like fruits, bugs and even blood. And that backs up the theory of Natural Selection. Survival of the Fittest. That’s what gives Galapagos its glory. No, not tourists. But the feeling of going back in time, to the time pre-human, all animal era.