Question

Explain the interpretation of Charles Darwin when he observed a variety of small black birds on Galapagos Island.

Answer 1

Charles Darwin is known as the father of evolution and he was the first to formulate the theory of evolution by natural selection in one of his famous books The Origin of Species in 1859. According to him, this is the process by which organisms change with time to adapt to the changing environment.

Complete answer:
Charles Darwin, on his visit to Galapagos Island, observed the features of a variety of black-colored small birds called finches. These finches had beaks closely resembling the beaks of original finches of South America. He assumed that these birds might have possessed normal beaks initially. But to ensure better survival, they slowly got evolved and acquired beaks like finches. This evolved character has eventually helped those birds make maximum utilization of the limited food resource available in the environment.

Based on his observation, Charles Darwin proposed the famous theory of Natural selection. According to this theory, there is always a rapid increase in the number of species in the environment. But due to the limited availability of resources, there develops chances of competition for the survival between these species. These competitions can be either intraspecific (among the same species) or interspecific (among different species). Ultimately, only the fittest among them would be able to survive. The ones which survived would further reproduce and, thereby, causing an increase in number while others (weak ones) would get eliminated or die. The variations that existed in the surviving individuals, which helped them to survive in such a harsh competitive environment, is passed on to the next generation ultimately leading to evolution.

Note:- According to Darwin's theory of Natural selection, offspring will inherit those traits from their parents that will help them to survive better in a competitive environment. Nature is believed to favor the fittest, while eliminating the weaker sections of the population.