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FANTASY ISLAND NIGHTMARE REALITY TV SHOW…DARWININ IN THE
GALAPAGOS BUBBLEGRAM
Cornelius had just snuggled down into bed the night before the first band performance of
the season. He got his uniform put together at the last minute yesterday when he got
together with Justin, the quartermaster. Boy, talk about a weird picnic! All the genetics of
food and cloning was making his head spin. But that last comment about getting a good
night’s sleep tonight…never going to happen. None of his friends knew about his
nightmare issue. All the time he spent checking closets, bathrooms, under the bed…Now
all he could think about was how awful his nightmare was going to be. Well, he couldn’t
just spend the night staring at the glow-constellations on his ceiling. He grabbed the book
on the nightstand and flipped on the bedside lamp. Ah, nothing like a little comic relief
reading when you had insomnia. What was the title of the book he’d dumped there last
week??? Something about Great and Famous Explorers and Scientists and their
Discoveries. Ho-hum. That should put him out like a light soon.
Cornelius read through the adventures of Magellan, the first man to circumnavigate (sail
around) the globe, then read about Sir Francis Drake, who in modern times might be
termed a pirate. Then he started on Charles Darwin, the Father of Evolution. Darwin
grew up in the early 1800’s in England, the son of a minister. As a ‘gentleman’ with no
actual job description, Darwin soon dabbled in the infant but growing study of science
and scientific discoveries. By chance, he was invited to sail around to new and interesting
exotic places in the ‘New World’ AKA South America, for the next several years. Being
a bright, curious lad, he jumped at the chance. So he went aboard the ‘Beagle’ (not the
dog, the ship) as the ship’s naturalist so he could ‘collect’ new plants and animals to be
brought back to England and studied at leisure.
See Beagle on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
nVkdkpLl0r8
Beagles (dog, not the ship)
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Magellan
In search of fame and fortune, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521) set out
from Spain in 1519 with a fleet of five ships to discover a western sea route to the Spice Islands.
En route he discovered what is now known as the Strait of Magellan and became the first
European to cross the Pacific Ocean. The voyage was long and dangerous, and only one ship
returned home three years later. Although it was laden with valuable spices from the East, only
18 of the fleet’s original crew of 270 returned with the ship. Magellan himself was killed in battle
on the voyage, but his ambitious expedition proved that the globe could be circled by sea and that
the world was much larger than had previously been imagined.
Drake
Francis Drake participated in some of the earliest English slaving voyages to Africa and earned a
reputation for his privateering, or piracy, against Spanish ships and possessions. Sent by Queen
Elizabeth II to South America in 1577, he returned home via the Pacific and became the first
Englishman to circumnavigate the globe; the queen rewarded him with a knighthood. In 1588,
Drake served as second-in-command during the English victory over the Spanish Armada. The
most famous mariner of the Elizabethan Age, he died off the coast of Panama in 1596 and was
buried at sea.
Darwin
Naturalist Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, on February 12, 1809. In 1831, he
embarked on a five-year survey voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle. His studies of
specimens around the globe led him to formulate his theory of evolution and his views on
the process of natural selection. In 1859, he published On the Origin of Species. He died on
April 19, 1882, in London.
Magellan
Drake
Darwin
Ho-hum. Yawn. Stretch. Blink, blink…b-l—i---n-------k, snore.
The lights dim.
And then the audience cheers for—
FANTASY ISLAND NIGHTMARE REALITY TV SHOW…DARWIN AND THE
GALAPAGOS!!
*Brought to you by—those great folks at Turtle and Finch soup, Inc.
Co: “And good morning to you folks at home. I’m Cornelius your announcer and today
we are on the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, watching the amazing struggle
for life between the finches and turtles. Today’s referee is none other than the famous
father of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin. Dr. Darwin is here to further his research
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on finch and turtle fitness. He has predicted that only one group will be crowned,
‘Survival of the Fittest’…that means the group that has the ability to use resources to live
and reproduce better than another. He told me earlier that this is simply natural selection
at work. I don’t know from nothing about natural selection so I asked him to explain it to
me. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘it’s when some organisms live and reproduce better than other
organisms. Those others, they may even die out and become extinct.’ And extinct means
all the individuals of a species are gone forever, folks. As you probably remember from
last week’s show, the finches really kicked turtle butt when the turtles got stuck in a Land
Rover rut, didn’t make it out, and couldn’t get the required daily food allowance. One of
the turtles responsible for leading the others into the rut flipped on his back, couldn’t get
turned right, and eventually got voted off the island. Today’s round of food foraging
focuses on seed finding, seed cracking, and seed eating. Now let’s go to the turtle pit and
see how things are going.”
Galapagos Islands are
HERE
STOP. Do questions
1-5.
“Ok, the game
warden is putting out
seed right now. I can
see big sunflowerlike seeds, mediumsized seeds from some kind of cone plant, and a small hard-shelled type of seed that
looks like grass seed. And the last seed that’s getting spread is a bunch of strawberries.
Yup, strawberries. I know that strawberries have their seeds on the outside which is really
Strawberry
weird. They always get stuck in my teeth when I eat them. I’m not
sure what this means for the turtles, but my guess is that the
turtles are going to make a beeline for the strawberries and leave
the other seeds to the birds to fight it out. I say, the turtles are
going for the strawberries because their mouth structures are not
good for cracking the outer coverings on the other type of seeds.
They can rip soft tissue and swallow chunks whole, like the
strawberry.
I’ll check my iPad here and find the term meaning to have a trait that allows this turtle
species to eat the strawberries, but not the other seed types…oh, here it is; adaptation.
And there’s also a caution that goes with the word ‘adaptation’. It says that it means the
genes in a population will change over time because of some advantage that one gene
and its phenotype has over another gene and it phenotype. Here’s the interesting part, an
individual cannot adapt, because after you are born, you can’t change your genes! So,
only populations, with the large number of genes in the ‘gene pool’ can show adaptation.
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They show this every time individuals produce offspring. That’s because the offspring
are slightly different from the parents. Huh, go figure. I guess it’s a good thing that I
don’t look like my parents. Or that my parents don’t look like me!
Anyhow, the birds will all be competing for the other seeds and must rely on the diversity
of their beaks to spread out their feeding so they are not all rushing to gobble up the same
type of seeds. The diversity of their beaks means that each bird species has some slightly
different bill structure that allows them to use a slightly different resource, and not
compete with other species over the same resource, such as food. This is great for the
birds, as they appear to be cleaning up on the seeds and filling their crops. The crop is a
storage pouch in their throats, sort of like a lunch bag.”
STOP. Do questions 6, 7.
Darwin
Tortoise
Finches
“We have here about four different species of birds. A species is a group of organisms
that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. It’s the variation within a species that is
really important. You see, variation means that within a species, there are slight
differences. For this feeding frenzy, species Q may have half the flock with bills that are
great at crushing those hard seeds, but the other half are great at crushing the hard seeds
and can also crush the cone seeds as well. The genes are slightly different, and if there’s
a crop failure of hard seeds, those individuals will starve and die, but the half that can eat
both the hard seeds and cone seeds can just switch to cone seeds and live just fine on
those.
Well, will you look at that? A Wild Card entry has just appeared on the island. It’s a brute
of a turtle that looks as though she’s been working out at the gym! What a bruiser. I’ll bet
next year’s crop of little ones would like to inherit those muscles. You know, Lemarck,
the French scientist who had competing theories during Darwin’s time, thought that
characteristics that you get after you are born, can be passed to your offspring. This is
called ‘acquired traits’. So working out a whole lot and then having young ones insures
that the young will be born really, really buff. But Dr. Darwin suggested a gradual change
in genes reflecting the most fit will occur. Fitness is present in genes when you are born
and you live and reproduce successfully. Those genes are an advantage (chosen for) when
you survive to reproduce. Thus Dr. Darwin’s definition of evolution, a change in gene
frequency over time.”
STOP. Do questions 8-11.
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Lamarck Giraffe Neck Theory
“Hey, wait a minute. Dr. Darwin, you can’t meddle in
the competition. Stop that. Folks, I’m sorry to say that
Dr. Darwin is putting on his sumo-wrestling gear and
is now going toe-to-toe with the bruiser turtle. He just
flipped her on her back, and her feet are clawing the
air! Dr. Darwin, Dr. Darwin, please get away from the
competitors. Oh, the finches have just convened an
emergency counsel and have voted Dr. Darwin off the
island. The turtles have concurred. The turtles are
pushing Dr. Darwin towards the beach and the finches
with larger beaks are dropping small rocks on his head,
the finches with smaller beaks are dropping gravel on him, and the finches with the
smallest beaks are laughing like gulls!!! Chaos. That’s what this has turned into. That just
goes to show that Dr. Darwin is right after all, survival of the fittest isn’t always pretty,
but works to keep those genes in the population that code for success in your
environment passed on to your offspring. This is Cornelius, signing off for this week,
here on the Galapagos Islands. Remember to buy your favorite soup this week, Turtle and
Finch soup. It goes great with crackers and is easily digested by your little ones. Thanks
folks. Join us next week when we travel to the top of the world, Mt. Everest, and watch
the world’s greatest climbers battle it out with each other to reach the top while not
getting pushed off.”
“Wait, no. I ah, I’m not the same as Dr. Darwin, guys. You can’t just shove me off too
just because I look like him. Hey, not so fast…”
As the camera slides off to the sunset, we see Cornelius, in his new band uniform, doing a
backstroke in the ocean headed for Ecuador. I hope he makes it for the first performance
of the season.
Polar Bear Backstroke
No, it is not Cornelius, but he is cute.
Evolution Clues
1. Islands off the coast of Ecuador.
2. Father of the theory of evolution by natural selection.
3. The group that has the ability to use resources to live and reproduce better than
another.
4. When some organisms are able to live and reproduce better than other organisms.
5. All the individuals of a species are gone forever.
6. A trait that allows one group to survive, but not another.
7. A species has some slightly different structure that allows them to not compete
with other species over a resource, such as food.
8. A group of organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.
9. Within a species, there are slight differences.
10. Characteristics that you get after you are born, Which Lamarck though could be
passed to your offspring.
11. A change in gene frequency over time.
Sir Not Appearing in This Movie
Evolution Bubblegram Answer Page
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10 Acquired traits
6 Adaptation
2 Darwin
7 Diversity
11 Evolution
5 Extinct
1 Galapagos Islands
4 Natural selection
8 Species
3 Survival of the fittest
9 Variation
I love turtle:
Acquired traits
Galapagos islands
Survival of the fittest
Variation
Species
Extinct
Evolution
Darwin
Adaptation
Natural selection
Diversity