• 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

  • Project Hail Mary Trailer First Look: What Would Happen If The Sun Got Darker?
  • Newly Discovered Cell Structure Might Hold Key To Understanding Devastating Genetic Disorders
  • What Is Kakeya’s Needle Problem, And Why Do We Want To Solve It?
  • “I Wasn’t Prepared For The Sheer Number Of Them”: Cave Of Mummified Never-Before-Seen Eyeless Invertebrates Amazes Scientists
  • Asteroid Day At 10: How The World Is More Prepared Than Ever To Face Celestial Threats
  • What Happened When A New Zealand Man Fell Butt-First Onto A Powerful Air Hose
  • Ancient DNA Confirms Women’s Unexpected Status In One Of The Oldest Known Neolithic Settlements
  • Earth’s Weather Satellites Catch Cloud Changes… On Venus
  • Scientists Find Common Factors In People Who Have “Out-Of-Body” Experiences
  • Shocking Photos Reveal Extent Of Overfishing’s Impact On “Shrinking” Cod
  • Direct Fusion Drive Could Take Us To Sedna During Its Closest Approach In 11,000 Years
  • Earth’s Energy Imbalance Is More Than Double What It Should Be – And We Don’t Know Why
  • We May Have Misjudged A Fundamental Fact About The Cambrian Explosion
  • The Shoebill Is A Bird So Bizarre That Some People Don’t Even Believe It’s Real
  • Colossal’s “Dire Wolves” Are Now 6 Months Old – And They’ve Doubled In Size
  • How To Fake A Fossil: Find Out More In Issue 36 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • Is It True Earth Used To Take 420 Days To Orbit The Sun?
  • One Of The Ocean’s “Most Valuable Habitats” Grows The Only Flowers Known To Bloom In Seawater
  • World’s Largest Digital Camera Snaps 2,104 New Asteroids In 10 Hours, Mice With 2 Dads Father Their Own Offspring, And Much More This Week
  • Simplest Explanation For “Anomalous” Signals Coming From Underneath Antarctica Ruled Out
  • 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