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Living things have babies that look a bit like their parents. Lots of things are passed on from parents to their young.

But the young are not all exactly the same. Some are a little bigger, or darker, or have a different beak.

On the Galápagos Islands there are birds called finches. Finches that eat seeds have thick, strong beaks. Finches that eat insects have thin, pointed beaks. Each beak fits its food!

In England there is a moth called the peppered moth. Some are light and some are dark.

Experiment: Hungry birds: which moths survive?

1. Lay one newspaper sheet on a table. This is the dirty, dark tree.
2. Guess: which moths will the birds find more easily, the white ones or the newspaper ones?
3. Your teacher scatters all 20 moths on the newspaper while the 'birds' look away.
4. One child is the hungry bird. They have 10 seconds to pick up as many moths as they can, one at a time.
5. Count the moths that are left. How many white? How many newspaper?
6. Take turns being the bird and do it again.

Round	White moths left	Newspaper moths left
Round 1
Round 2
Round 3

Questions

1. Draw a dark tree with one light moth and one dark moth. Circle the moth a bird would find first.

   🍎

2. In our game, which moths survived more: white or newspaper?

   white / newspaper

3. Draw a finch beak for eating seeds.

   🍎

Sources for every fact on this sheet: echoesof.science/school/evolution/sources/

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