Photograph by Peri Apex
On the Galapagos, The Betrayal of Judas Goats
Once a year, usually on a long drive around Labor Day, I catch up on the old podcasts I’ve missed all summer. One I particularly love is Radiolab, the NPR mix of nerdy science and audio bombast. Earlier this summer, its gregarious hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich produced an episode entirely on the Galapagos Islands.
We all know the Galapagos’s role as a laboratory of evolution. Darwin formulated his famous theory in the 1830s on the 18 islands off Ecuador, all so isolated from the mainland (and each other) that species slowly morphed over a few million years to accentuate advantageous traits like longer beaks or bigger feet.
That’s the Galapagos’s past. The islands’ future is mired in debates over how to
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