Galápagos Tortoises and Natural Selection
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The voyage of the Beagle where Charles Darwin gathered inspiration to add to his evolutionary conjectures would have been a dream cruise for many folks (his father paid for it). If someone took a notion to meet Charlie on the Galápagos, he would have had to saddle up and ride west from Ecuador. Except that horses cannot swim that far. Some of the giant tortoises have shells that kinda sorta resemble saddles, however, so there you go. Those are found in the uninhabited smaller islands of this group of volcanic islands. For being a great scientist, Charlie dropped the ball on making detailed observations of these critters. Giant Galapagos tortoise, Flickr / Sara Yeomans ( CC BY 2.0 ), modified at PhotoFunia On a side note, all tortoises are classified as turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. Tortoises don't spend all that much time in water . These critters were once plentiful, but are now endangered. One reason is that whalers and others discovered that they were good ...