• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Darwin Once Discovered He Was Eating The Extremely Rare Bird He’d Been Searching For For Years

October 3, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

Charles Darwin once discovered the rare bird he had been searching for for years – halfway through chowing it down for Christmas dinner.

When you picture Darwin, you may imagine him in the Galapagos diligently taking notes while observing a finch, maybe remarking on slight differences between it and another very similar finch. You probably don’t immediately imagine him riding around on a giant tortoise or chowing down on endangered species as if they were party snacks – but Darwin did both these things, with the latter leading to a particularly distressing incident in which he consumed a vital missing piece of his work.

Advertisement

Arriving on San Cristóbal Island in the Galapagos on his first trip, Darwin regularly – and without regard to their suitability for transport – rode around on tortoises, which he also considered food.

“I frequently got on their backs, and then giving a few raps on the hinder part of their shells, they would rise up and walk away,” he wrote, “but I found it very difficult to keep my balance”

Darwin – a famous member of the Cambridge University Glutton Club which met to feast on “birds and beasts which were before unknown to human palate” – of course ate the animals, which he preferred roasted or in the form of a soup.

Advertisement

“While staying in this upper region we lived entirely upon tortoise-meat: the breastplate roasted (as the Gauchos do carne con cuero), with the flesh on it, is very good,” Darwin wrote of the animals. “And the young tortoises make excellent soup; but otherwise the meat to my taste is indifferent.”

As great of a naturalist as he was, Darwin was a hungry man. In December 1833, while at Port Desire, one of the ship’s crew shot a rhea to be eaten for Christmas dinner. Darwin had for a long time been searching for a bird he called the “Avestruz petise“, now known as Darwin’s Rhea. It interested him because of the slight differences between it and another species of rhea which lived to the island’s north. For years, the birds had eluded him – but they weren’t about to elude his stomach.

Darwin believed that he was eating a young greater rhea that Christmas, but was in fact eating the elusive petise which would one day be named after him. He jumped up during the meal and desperately tried to salvage the remains of the bird, managing to get a wing, the head, its legs, and plenty of larger feathers. 

Advertisement

With his leftovers in tow, he went off to study the remains (the biological matter formerly known as “lunch”) and became convinced that there were two species of rhea in South America, of which he was correct.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Myanmar shadow government unveils new strategy to oppose military rule
  2. Malaysia warns new Indo-Pacific pact may trigger nuclear arms race
  3. Soccer-Now I feel like a Villa player, says Bailey after sparkling cameo
  4. Boxing-Britain’s Joyce wants 2016 Olympic gold if fight manipulation is proven

Source Link: Darwin Once Discovered He Was Eating The Extremely Rare Bird He'd Been Searching For For Years

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Pioneering “Pregnancy Test” Could Identify Hormones In Skeletons Over 1,000 Years Old
  • The First Neolithic Self-Portrait? Stony Human Face Emerges In 12,000-Year-Old Ruins At Karahan Tepe
  • Women Are Diagnosed With ADHD 5 Years Later Than Men, Even With Worse Symptoms
  • What Is Cryptozoology? We Explore The History And Mystery Of This Controversial Field
  • The Universe’s “Red Sky Paradox” Just Got Darker: Most Stars Might Never Host Observers
  • Uranus And Neptune May Not Be “Ice Giants” But The Solar System’s First “Rocky Giants”
  • COVID-19 Can Alter Sperm And Affect Brain Development In Offspring, Causing Anxious Behavior
  • Why Do Spiders’ Legs Curl Up Like That When They’re Dead?
  • “Dead Men’s Fingers” Might Just Be The Strangest Fruit On The Planet
  • The South Atlantic’s Giant Weak Spot In The Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Growing
  • Nearly Half A Century After Being Lost, “Zombie Satellite” LES-1 Began Sending Signals To Earth
  • Extinct In the Wild, An Incredibly Rare Spix’s Macaw Chick Hatches In New Hope For Species
  • HUNTR/X Or Giant Squid? Following Alien Claims, We Asked Scientists What They Would Like Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS To Be
  • Flat-Earthers Proved Wrong Using A Security Camera And A Garage
  • Earth Breaches Its First Climate Tipping Point: We’re Moving Into A World Without Coral Reefs
  • Cheese Caves, A Proposal, And Chance: How Scientists Ended Up Watching Fungi Evolve In Real Time
  • Lab-Grown 3D Embryo Models Make Their Own Blood In Regenerative Medicine Breakthrough
  • Humans’ Hidden “Sixth Sense” To Be Mapped Following $14.2 Million Prize – What Is Interoception?
  • Purple Earth Hypothesis: Our Planet Was Not Blue And Green Over 2.4 Billion Years Ago
  • Hippos Hung Around In Europe 80,000 Years Later Than We Thought
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version