• Question: How many types of Finch are there?

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      Asked by AB+SW to Anais, katy, Lauren, Richard, Stuart on 11 Mar 2016.
      • Photo: Lauren Laing

        Lauren Laing answered on 11 Mar 2016:

        There are LOTS! I’m not sure we know for sure exactly how many there are! There are 3 subfamilies: Fringillinae, Carduelinae and Euphoniinae. Within each of these subfamilies there are many species, sometimes 100s!

      • Photo: Richard Friend

        Richard Friend answered on 11 Mar 2016:

        Ha! I had to cheat and look this one up. The BBC reckons there’s 138 different species of finch, although doing a bit of extra research reveals that there’s often a load of other sorts of bird which are called finches which actually aren’t true finches. so yeah, LOTS!

      • Photo: Anais Kahve

        Anais Kahve answered on 13 Mar 2016:

        I’m afraid I haven’t got a clue but I can see that other scientists do which is great!

      • Photo: Stuart Atkinson

        Stuart Atkinson answered on 14 Mar 2016:

        Wow – I had to check it out – I didn’t realise there were so many either!

        Something you may not know is that his studies of finches from the Galapagos Islands was one of the things that led Charles Darwin to his theory of natural selection (evolution)…

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