Unknown Facts about Galapagos

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Are you curious about the Galapagos Islands and willing to learn more about them? Do you want to know what makes them so special? Don’t miss this list of interesting facts!         

1.    The name of “Galapagos” comes from the word Galápago, an old Spanish term used for horse saddles that were shaped like the shells of some of the first turtles found in the region.         

2.    The name of “Las Encantadas” means enchanted or bewitched. It has been given to those islands because they are often very foggy, something that confused the early Spanish navigators who thought they were looking at the same island moving around in the mist.

3.    It’s in the Galapagos Island where the rarest species on the planet lives: being the only one of its kind, the giant turtle of the “Geochelone Nigra Abingdoni” subspecies –better known as “Lonesome George”–  lives with two female turtles,  but it has been incapable of breeding. George appears in the Guinness Book of Records as the “rarest living creature”.

4.    The Flightless Cormorant is the only type of cormorant found in the Galapagos. From all the 28 cormorant species worldwide, it is the only one that has lost the ability to fly. Nevertheless, thanks to its heavy and powerful legs, it can make deep, long underwater dives to get its food.

5.    To determine who will have the right to mate, the male Galapagos Giant Turtles will rise on their legs and stretch their necks. The longest neck wins and gets the female.

6.    The Galapagos Masked Boobies lay two eggs, but invariably raise only one chick. If both eggs manage to hatch, the oldest chick will kill its younger brother –a behavior called siblicide–.

7.    The Galapagos Islands are, in fact, the peaks of submerged volcanoes that arose from the bottom of the ocean due to an intense volcanic activity produced when the Nazca plate moved over a hot spot, under the surface of the Earth.

8.    The Galapagos are considered to be one of the most active volcanic areas in the world.  In fact, a volcano called “La Cumbre”, located on Fernandina Island, erupted this year on April 11, after four years of inactivity.

9.    In 1535 the Spanish bishop of Panama, Fray Tomás de Berlanga, deemed the islands as “cursed by God, inhospitable and worthless”. His expedition found big stones, giant turtles, “dragons coming from the sea” (marine iguanas) and cactuses… but no water. With two sailors and ten horses having died of dehydration, they eventually found a source of fresh water and promptly abandoned the islands.

10.    In 1841 the American novelist Herman Melville navigated around the Galapagos Islands on board a whaling vessel. There, he gathered the material that he would later use for his famous novel Moby Dick, in 1851. He also wrote, in 1845, ten philosophical essays about the Encantadas Islands.

11.    Charles Darwin was so repulsed by the marine iguana that he described it as “a hideous looking creature, of a dirty black color, stupid and sluggish in its movements.”

12.    Prince Charles and his wife Camilla became the official “godparents” for a tiny, two-year old turtle during a visit to the Galapagos’ Charles Darwin Research Station. Since the turtle was formerly known as “No. 53”, the Prince of Wales decided to rename it after his eldest son, William.