[Animals chattering] [Campbell-Staton] Islands are laboratories of life... places to see evolution in action. <\/p>\n
[Rustling] On the most famous island laboratory of them all, Charles Darwin, or Chuck D, as I like to call him, got his first glimpses of how changes in the environment shape life. <\/p>\n
And those animals are continuing to change... updating our understanding of what evolution means in the 21st century. <\/p>\n
[Water bubbling] [Upbeat theme music playing] My name's Shane Campbell-Staton. <\/p>\n
I'm an evolutionary biologist. <\/p>\n
I'm here to tell you stories from filmmakers, scientists, and local experts across the globe about a pulse of change. <\/p>\n
The entire planet is shifting. <\/p>\n
The climate is changing at an incredible 170 times faster than it should be. <\/p>\n
We can't always see it. <\/p>\n
We're so caught up in our own thing. <\/p>\n
You know? <\/p>\n
But the signs are everywhere. <\/p>\n
The entire tree of life is whispering to us. <\/p>\n
[Water splashing] We just have to pay attention. <\/p>\n
[Snorting] Out there, things aren't what you expect. <\/p>\n
You'll see. <\/p>\n
For an evolutionary biologist like me, nowhere on the planet can be more special than the Galapagos. <\/p>\n
This is Nirvana. <\/p>\n
Recently, we'd heard of signs of change etched in the ocean... reports of crazy activity in remote coves... predators behaving in unexpected ways. <\/p>\n
El 06:00 nos levantamos... y los lobos \"Auu auu auu\" gritaban \"Kshh kshh kshh.\" <\/p>\n
[Splashing] [Man] Oh, qu pasa? <\/p>\n
Qu pasa? <\/p>\n
[Splashing] [Campbell-Staton] Sea lions are hunting in a way seen nowhere else in the world. <\/p>\n
[Man] Una locura. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] On the trail of this mysterious behavior, we caught up with local fisherman Franklin Arreaga who thinks he knows what's going on. <\/p>\n
Ah ha. <\/p>\n
Estoy pensando...ha ha ha! <\/p>\n
Atacaban los lobos, los lobos cogan, seguian, seguian las albacoras. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] Sea lions hunting tuna. <\/p>\n
Now, that's not normal. <\/p>\n
Franklin should know. <\/p>\n
He spends his whole life fishing these waters. <\/p>\n
[Franklin] La pesquera ha estado dentro de mi familia hace 50 aos. <\/p>\n
Yo pesco de los 14, 15 aos. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] Oh, wow! <\/p>\n
Yeah. <\/p>\n
That is definitely a big tuna. <\/p>\n
[Franklin] Es mi vida, mi pasin, mi todo. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] Franklin says he can take us to a secret cove to try and see the sea lion hunting in action. <\/p>\n
But there are no guarantees. <\/p>\n
[Chain rattling] You just have to wait. <\/p>\n
[Rattling] Time for a one-on-one chat on the state of our changing planet. <\/p>\n
[Franklin] Antes haba bastante abundancia. <\/p>\n
Eh, hace unos 15 o 20 aos se pescaban, se pescaba cerca de puerto. <\/p>\n
[Line unraveling, splashing] Ahora tenemos que correr ms lejos. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] Up to 8 hours further... [Birds calling] something Franklin puts squarely at the feet of the industrial fishing fleets just outside Galapagos' waters. <\/p>\n
He may be right. <\/p>\n
90% of all global fish stocks are over-fished or completely depleted. <\/p>\n
Don't just take Franklin's word for it. <\/p>\n
The sea lions are also having a harder time finding fish... so much so, they are changing. <\/p>\n
Normally, sea lions hunt sardines... but with fish stocks crashing, some are switching to a new prey... something 300 times bigger-- Franklin's tuna. <\/p>\n
And he told us they aren't just hunting a new fish. <\/p>\n
They're taking them down in a whole new way. <\/p>\n
But, the wait was so long, we were beginning to wonder if this was just a fisherman's tale. <\/p>\n
Then, finally... the sea lions arrive... on the hunt. <\/p>\n
[Splashing] And, instead of chasing the tuna out in the open water... they corral them towards the shallows. <\/p>\n
[Franklin] Ahora vienen todos lobos saltando como delfines a traer el atn... y tratar de encaminarlas a la poza. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] Tuna are some of the fastest fish on the planet, 4 times faster than the sea lions. <\/p>\n
[Franklin] Son como un misil en el agua. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] So, the sea lions start to do something else new. <\/p>\n
[Water bubbling] Normally, they hunt on their own, but now they play as a team. <\/p>\n
It's like they're saying, \"You go on the attack, and I'll hold down the defense.\" <\/p>\n
A chaser drives the fish towards a dead end, but the fish turns to open ocean. <\/p>\n
Blockers move in and cut off the escape. <\/p>\n
[Sea gulls crying] Now the sea lions close the trap. <\/p>\n
The water is getting shallower and shallower. <\/p>\n
[Sea lion grunting] The tuna are out of their depth. <\/p>\n
As the fish tire, the sea lions move in for the kill. <\/p>\n
[Sea lion grunting] [Sea lion grunting] If you want to get all evolutionary about it, well, hunting as a team is socialization. <\/p>\n
[Sea lion grunting] It shows the emergence of a new culture, underwater, in real time. <\/p>\n
[Splashing] Any way you cut it, that's something very special. <\/p>\n
It's a behavior new to science: animals changing in response to a new world order. <\/p>\n
As the environment shifts 10 times faster than in the last 65 million years, the question is: Can life keep up with the pace of change? <\/p>\n
[Bird calling] [Splashing] Well, there are new discoveries about that, too... [Splashing] with a much more famous Galapagos resident. <\/p>\n
[Splashing] It's a giant in my world... [Chirping] the finch. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] It was finches like this that cemented my man Chuck D's revolutionary theory of how animals change over time, how we all got to be who we are. <\/p>\n
The incredible thing is, now they're doing it all over again. <\/p>\n
Darwin showed that one kind of finch, isolated on different islands, can change into different kinds of finch with different kinds of beak... You have a beak for seeds... [Chirping] a beak for flowers... a beak for bugs... Aw, yeah! <\/p>\n
[Chuckling] even a beak for blood. <\/p>\n
Each beak adapted to the conditions of each island over millions of years. <\/p>\n
\"Survival of the fittest,\" as they say. <\/p>\n
[Wings flapping] This isn't just a change in behavior. <\/p>\n
It's an evolution of their physical form. <\/p>\n
So far so good, but research is now showing that Darwin had one aspect of this story all wrong. <\/p>\n
For 50 years, biologists have been capturing and recording Darwin's finches in every minute detail, and they've revealed something that would amaze Darwin-- the speed of change. <\/p>\n
[Birds chirping] This is the guy to tell us all about it, one of the latest to dedicate their life to the birds-- local scientist Jaime Chaves. <\/p>\n
[Jaime] For any evolutionary biologist to have even the chance to be on the Galapagos to study finches is kind of a gift. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] Speaking to him, it's hard not feel a little jealous. <\/p>\n
[Jaime] I'm just amazed by the amount of data that these little birds have been producing. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] Nothing like a bit of data. <\/p>\n
[Jaime] The difference between these two birds is the beak sizes. <\/p>\n
So, this bird on the right-hand side has a smaller beak compared to this one on my left, although being both from the same species. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] These tiny variations can mean the difference between life and death. <\/p>\n
[Jaime] Almost 1 millimeter in beak length. <\/p>\n
That maybe doesn't sound too big, but a dramatic environmental event can wipe out half of the population, because those birds didn't have the beak shape to respond to that dramatic change. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] You don't need a whole different island for evolution to take place. <\/p>\n
The data now show that all it takes is a big enough driving force, like a severe drought, and beak shapes can change almost overnight. <\/p>\n
[Jaime] Evolution on the Galapagos is actually very fast. <\/p>\n
We can actually measure how much evolution can happen between year 1 and year 2. <\/p>\n
[Campbell-Staton] So, there you have it. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
More: <\/p>\n
Evolution Earth | Islands | Episode 2 - PBS<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Animals chattering] [Campbell-Staton] Islands are laboratories of life... places to see evolution in action. Continue reading