12. Studying Galapagos Tortoises and mockingbirds led Charles Darwin to come up with the theory of evolution in the 1830s
In 1831, a 22-year-old naturalist named Charles Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle on a long voyage circumnavigating the world. Darwin collected many specimens during the nearly 5-year expedition, including tortoises and mockingbirds from the Galapagos Islands. He noticed slight variations in specimens from different islands, but everyone told him they were different species. But just six months after returning to England, Darwin looked at the specimens again. He began to wonder whether ‘one species does change into another’. Eventually, this thought turned into the full-blown theory of evolution. The Galapagos tortoises and mockingbirds changed how we understand the world forever.