this is a first edition today Darwin has achieved an almost Mythic status original copies of the Origin of Species are handled with extreme reverence while specimens he collected are treated almost as relics sometimes however something collected by Darwin achieves a status beyond what it really deserves as zoology curators found when the story of one of bird collections was pieced together these are Darwin's finches they were collected on his great 5-year Voyage of Discovery on the beagle in the 1830s they're often cited as the spark for Darwin's big idea his theory of evolution variation in the Finch's beak shape and size demonstrate how they'd evolv to take advantage of food available in their particular habitat the the misconception is that the finch has provided Darwin with this great Eureka moment in the galapagus: of bird skins that have been largely overlooked by the history books Darwin's mocking birds Darwin collected a number of them from the South American Mainland when the Expedition moved onto the galapagus: one here the floriana Mockingbird and it was the differences between these two birds that really got him starting thinking now the reason he could think about these two birds and notice a difference is because of these ones the mainland Birds collected by Darwin showed little variation what surprised him about the galapagus: chest there's nothing going on there and this one here has got this dark dark chest band birds are a bit different in size and there's some differences in the beak shape it was it was different enough for him to think well that's that's extraordinary that's that's greater than any of the differences I've seen across the continent of South America and he he wrote in his his his notes that you know these differences might mean that species changed so we know it was the mocking birds that helped him and not the finches the very ation in mocking birds isolated from each other LED Darwin to question the stability of species an idea that would eventually lead him to his theory of evolution by natural selection for me it's really important to reinstate the mocking birds as they're in their rightful position as as Darwin's key bird inspiration we can understand Darwin better by by looking at the mocking birds and knowing these are the key ones and not the finches