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Why would someone smuggle finches?
Singing finches fetch lucrative income!
The police apprehended a man in April 2021 at the JFK airport who smuggled 35 songbirds from Guyana.
Why?
I was curious. Then I learned that the Chestnut-bellied male finches are high-priced crooners & they price each one at $10.000 on the black market. Other birds cost between $3000 & $5000.
The smugglers' price these finches like racehorses! Singing finches serve as a valuable commodity in Brooklyn & Queens. The caged birds compete for money. The owner of the fastest singing bird reaps the gambling money.
Where did these birds originate?
PBS & Sciencedaily.com describe the history of Darwin's finches. Their common ancestor arrived on the Galápagos Islands about two million years ago.
As time passed, the finches evolved into fifteen different species, differing in body size, beak shape, song & feeding behavior.
Scientists from Uppsala & Princeton Universities describe the evolutionary history of these birds. Researchers identified a gene that explains the variation in beak shape & food sources among the species.
The research group sequenced 120 birds from six different islands. Their study…
