we're going to discuss natural selection
and how Charles Darwin observed
natural selection and evolution in the
finches that are now called
Darwin's finches in the Galapagos
Islands so
Darwin was a naturalist aboard the HMS
Beagle which
set sail in order to do a mapping
expedition and Darwin
was brought along in order to catalog
and draw
and look at all of the life that they
encountered
in these new places where they were
mapping so
Darwin got to the galapagos and noticed
that
there were group of finches a group of
birds that all seemed to
to be pretty closely related they seemed
very similar except
they had some phenological differences
like
their beaks for example one of the groups of birds
were insectivorous birds they fed on insects
and they had thin sharp beaks
that are best suited to spearing insects in the air
another group of finches fed on the ground
on seeds that were found on the ground
and they had shorter squatter beaks that
were best suited to eating seeds off the
ground
there is a third group finches that
eat from cactus is and they had sharper
longer
beaks are best suited to getting
seeds out of cactuses out of cactus flowers
so Darwin was able to see that
the variation in a population
combined with a preference for a
certain type of food could lead
overtime
to the development of a separate species
whose differences
aided them in survival and fitness
for the type of food that they consumed
