Technically, Charles Darwin wasn't the first person to stumble upon evolution. Darwin was one in a string of people, one of whom was his own grandfather, who thought there must be a strange reason animals "continue to improve" over time. Decades later, while Darwin was following tortoises in the Galápagos, another man, Alfred Russel Wallace, was conducting his own research in the Malay Islands north of Australia. Wallace reported his findings first—a theory of "evolution"—but Darwin's opus, The Origin of Species, was more comprehensive. It was also marketed better.

Such is the case with evolution. The fittest survive and the weaker find themselves wiped away by time, or worse, death. The central idea of natural selection is advantage, and Darwin had