South America
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Vampires
Vampires are the stuff of myth and legend – the undead, coming out at night from their graves to suck the blood of the living to maintain their own health and vitality. The idea of vampires goes as far back as the Ancient Greeks and Romans but the vampire as we know it stems from 18th Century Europe and the modern vampire is rooted in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, precursor the an entire genre which is still popular today. Vampires are fictional characters, with their origins in attempts to explain aspects of disease and death that couldn’t be understood at the time. Or are they? Julia Caples (born 1968) from Pennsylvania…
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Darwin’s tortoises
While visiting the Galapagos archipelago in 1835, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) encountered the giant tortoise and observed that, as with the finches, each island had its own unique types of tortoise. The most notable difference, it turned out, was in the shape of the shell – some giant tortoises were able to extend their necks higher than others depending on what food source was available to them. They had evolved to survive on each particular island. The giant tortoise was a staple part of the diet of the indigenous peoples and also a source of money and goods from sale and trade – Darwin ate giant tortoise on James Island. Forty…
