"The book I'm holding contained pictures of an unbelievable number of birds, snakes, and amphibians. I played this game with the kids where I'd point at an animal to see if they had seen it. They would say
sí if they had. After 90 percent of the responses were affirmative, I began to wonder if they were pulling my leg. So I flipped to a section with animals from the Galápagos Islands. There, I found this one snake—which looked very similar to one of the brown snakes they had seen—and when I pointed to it, the kids responded no. The kids mentioned that the difference was in the number of stripes the snake had. It was an extremely subtle difference, and yet these kids were aware of it. It made me think they have probably seen many more creatures than the average Ph.D. in biology."
—Contributing Editor Jim Thornton
