When you imagine Charles Darwin, you can imagine him diligently taking notes while observing a finch in the Galapagos, perhaps naively pointing out the slight differences between him and another very similar finch. But you probably don’t easily think of him hovering over a giant tortoise or eating endangered species as if they were party snacks. But Darwin did both: He researched and ate!
Arriving on San Cristóbal Island in the Galapagos on his first voyage, Darwin regularly – and regardless of their suitability for transportation – also hovered over turtles, which he saw as food.
“I would often get on their backs and then hit the back of their shell a few times, they would get up and walk away,” Darwin wrote, “but I had a very hard time keeping my balance.”
Darwin, a famous member of the Cambridge University Gluttony Club, which came together to feast with birds and animals previously unknown to the human palate, naturally ate these turtles, preferably roasted or in soup form.
Darwin wrote of the animals: “While staying in this upper region, we lived entirely on turtle meat: the roasted breastplate with meat on it (as the Gauchos do the carne con cuero) is very good. And the young turtles make great soup, but other than that, I don’t think the meat is much different. “
He ate the bird first, then discovered it
As great a naturalist as Darwin was, he was a hungry man. In December 1833, while in Desire Harbor, one of the ship’s crew shot a rhea bird, known for its resemblance to an ostriches, to be eaten for Christmas dinner. At that time Darwin had long been searching for a bird he called “Avestruz petise” and is now known as “Darwin’s Rhea”. These birds caught his attention because of slight differences with another rhea species living in the north of the island. He had not been able to catch one of these birds for years. But he didn’t think it would end up in someone’s stomach.
Darwin thought he ate a young great rhea that Christmas, but he was actually eating the petise that had eluded him for years, which would one day be named after him. Realizing the situation during the meal, he suddenly jumped up and desperately tried to save the remains of the bird, succeeding in obtaining a wing, head, legs, and plenty of larger feathers.
With the remains with him, he went to examine the remains and was convinced that there were two species of rhea in South America. He was right about this. In short, Darwin first ate the bird and then discovered it…
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