Under these drastically changing conditions, the struggle to survive favored the larger birds with deep, strong beaks for opening the hard seeds. Smaller finches with less-powerful beaks perished.

Darwin noted how different finches from the Galapagos Island developed different kinds of beaks, based on the food that they specialized in eating. Later studies showed how rapid fluctuations in ...

In particular, changes to the size and shape of the beaks have enabled the different species to specialise in different types of food: seeds, insects, cactus flowers and fruits or even bird blood. The ...

"In my very first publication on the finches, back in 2001, I showed that changes in the beaks of Darwin's finches lead to ...

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Because the drought reduced the number of seeds and finches with bigger beaks were able to eat the larger and harder seeds so more of them survived.