Okay, but what's the deal with Darwin's finches?

E35. Eighteen species of small brown bird on a pile of volcanic rock have taught us more about how evolution actually works than almost anything else on Earth. Not because Darwin figured them out. He didn't. Because a handful of scientists went back, banded every bird on one island, and watched it happen in real time. Scott heads to the Galapagos with Dr. Erik Enbody, Assistant Professor of Computational Biology at Cornell University, to find out how one ancestor became eighteen, why the beak is the only thing worth looking at, and what happens when species that aren't supposed to interbreed start swapping genes anyway.

In this episode you'll hear about:

The island so small you can band every bird on it, and the drought that killed almost all of them
One gene that explains 40% of beak size, when nothing in human height explains even 1%
The finch that does something mind-blowingly villainous and what it says about how far evolution will go

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

Large Ground-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85965
Common Cactus-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML86715
Small Tree-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85464
Vegetarian Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML82506
Galapagos Mockingbird audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML45963
Española Mockingbird audio contributed by Herb Elliott, ML638777433
Floreana Mockingbird audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85455
San Cristobal Mockingbird audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML28656
Palm Tanager audio contributed by Curtis Marantz, ML88937
Blue-footed Booby audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML85906
Vampire Ground-Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML86756
Woodpecker Finch audio contributed by Robert I. Bowman, ML82522
Paradise Tanager audio contributed by Curtis Marantz, ML127399
Galápagos Sea Lion audio contributed by Arnoud B. van den Berg, ML125020

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Jaksot(36)

Okay, but what's the deal with nests?

E34. Not all birds build one, but for the ones that do, a nest has a single job and a shockingly wide range of ways to get it done. Dr. Vanya Rohwer, Curator of Birds and Mammals at the Cornell Univer...

6 Elo 29min

Okay, but how do birds handle a heatwave?

E33. When the air temperature climbs past a bird's own body temperature, staying cool stops being free and starts to cost them water they may not have. Dr. Blair Wolf, University of New Mexico, has sp...

30 Heinä 26min

Okay, but how does wildfire smoke impact birds?

E32. Wildfire smoke is blanketing more of the map every year, and it turns out a smoky sky changes everything for birds, from how they breathe to whether we can find them at all. Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot...

23 Heinä 31min

Okay, but did birds invent music?

E31. If a bird sings a phrase worthy of Beethoven, is that music, or just biology in a nice outfit? Dr. Hollis Taylor, a violinist, composer, and ornithologist, has spent more than two decades recordi...

16 Heinä 29min

Okay, but is the dawn chorus getting quieter?

E30. That wall of birdsong outside your window at sunrise has a name, a structure, and a surprising amount of drama. This week Scott talks with Dr. Dan Mennill, a professor at the University of Windso...

9 Heinä 34min

Okay, but what's it like as a bird at the top of the world?

E29. Standing at 11,000 feet, lungs burning, Scott watched birds go about their afternoon in the exact thin air that had nearly taken him out. This week he sits down with Dr. Chris Witt, evolutionary ...

2 Heinä 34min

Okay, but does easy living make birds dumber?

E28. A bird's brain is the most expensive thing it owns, and evolution doesn't hand one out for free. Dr. Carlos Botero, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has spent a decade tr...

25 Kesä 32min