Darwin's Delights - Adaptation Investigation

Charles Darwin, on his HMS Beagle voyage to the Galapagos Islands in the early 1800s, discovered that there were several types of finch with different shapes beaks. He found out that each beak was different due to the food it was eating on the island. This went on to prove his theory of adaptation.

5LJ investigated this theory, and tried to find out why each beak size was different. We used different sized tweezers and tongs to help us represent the beak size and a few different sized objects to help represent the seed size. Doing this, the children were able to see for themselves why only a certain type of beak size could eat a certain type of food. Furthermore, they were able to identify which finch lived on a particular island, because of their shape and size of beak.