Charles Darwin and Evolution

Charles Darwin, a 22 year old naturalist, stepped aboard the HMS Beagle and changed the world. They circumnavigated, which means travelling all the way around the globe. The Beagle visited many places that astounded Darwin including Tierra del Fuego, the Galapagos, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, and others. It’s really interesting for me to learn about because his voyage through the Pacific included pieces of my own sailboat trip, a three year exploration of the Pacific Ocean with my family. For me and Darwin alike, the Galapagos is very special.

As a young child, Charles loved to tell crazy stories and cause mischief. Above all, he had a passion for learning about nature. The young Darwin collected flora and fauna near his home in England with his friends. He kept notebooks filled with his observations and questions. He and his brother prepared a chemistry lab in the family garden. He was curious at a young age and this quality allowed Darwin to succeed in understanding evolution.

FitzRoy, the captain of the Beagle, requested suggestions for a naturalist to come aboard. Through friends of friends, much persuasion, because his dad wouldn’t let him leave on such a “pointless adventure”, letters, and delays in departure, Charles Darwin and the rest of the crew set sail on the Beagle on December 27th, 1831, on a drizzling, cold day. The boat crossed the Atlantic and entered Chile. Captain Fitzroy had taken a few native Fuegan children from Tierra del Fuego several years ago on a different voyage. They had learned Christianity and the “civilized” English way. On this voyage, FitzRoy decided to return them to their home in the hopes they would teach their fellow “savages” to be civilized. It failed miserably, and the children quickly went back to their old ways. Darwin thought about this a lot. Did they simply not contain the brain capacity to stay the same? After returning home, this event became key for Darwin to figure out the nature of evolution.

After sailing under Cape Horn, the Beagle hugged the west side of South America then, after reaching the north part of South America, headed due west off into the Pacific. A five week stop for provisioning brought them to The Galapagos. But this proved to be a much more important step for Darwin.

Galapagos Penguins

Reef Sharks (Yes, we did swim with them :) )

The Galapagos is a magical place. My experience of these islands was incredible. Slicing through the nutrient rich, deep blue expanse for a week before the first shadows appear, waiting on the bright white thread of the horizon, there is nothing more beautiful than this colorful, lively archipelago. Soon, the native birds fly to the ship, like customs officers coming to make sure everything is safe on board. The queenly albatross with her long, graceful six foot wings skims the water. An Arctic tern, with it’s unusual, whiplike tail comes to rest atop the mast. Closer to land, the low red, lime green, and brilliant blue footed boobie birds cloud the skies in dense masses. At the slightest twitch of a school of fish below, the entire group dive bombs and massacres the prey. The hideous Frigate dances in and out of the masses, stealing food from other birds and swallowing helpless chicks hidden under the rocks or left unprotected. The male Frigate has an inflatable red pouch used to attract mates. Sand sharks, lemon sharks, hammerheads, tigers, whale sharks, black tips, white tips, and reef sharks prowl the edges of the reefs. 

Blue footed Boobie Birds Dive Bombing

The Galapagos gets stranger still. The second smallest species of penguin dwell on the crusted volcanic rocks and in the shallows. The Galapagos Penguin is the only penguin to live north of the equator. Marine and land iguanas rule the sands and rocks. 
The marine iguana is a unique creature. It’s spiny face and salt crusted head let it blend perfectly with the volcanic stones. It swims and holds its breath for several minutes underwater while eating algae. It's differently adapted cousin, the land iguana, eats cactus, grabbing it in its mouth and using long, delicate fingers to grasp the cactus leaf.

Marine Iguana

Land Iguana Eating Cactus

Giant tortoises are the most famous of the Galapagos animals. They are graceful, loving creatures. Feet like elephants and a snake-like head, these animals interested me. A long time ago, many of the tortoises were captured and eaten on boats, such as The Beagle. Sometimes the helpless animals were taken to mainland Ecuador and sold for their meat. One particular tortoise I saw in Bahia de Caraquez, a small town on Ecuador’s coast, caught my attention. He had been taken a hundred years ago from the Galapagos and sold to a man in a kayak. The tortoise escaped and wandered into the marketplace in Bahia. He got sick from eating scraps then someone brought him home and cared for him. Now he lives at a school in Bahia. He’s too old to be taken back to the Galapagos. Many tortoises weren’t as lucky. Unfortunately, most tortoises taken on ships were butchered and eaten after sitting in the hull of a boat for weeks.

Playing, sleeping, lounging, or barking sea lions cover every piece of these islands. Despite the surprising amount of people currently living in the Galapagos, sea lions cover the park benches, docks, playgrounds, and walkways, oblivious to humans. On catamarans, which are two hulled boats, I’ve seen Galapagos sea lions climb up the slippery swim ladder in the back and flop their way into the cockpit. One time, this happened in the middle of the night to my friends’ boat. My friends, seven and nine year olds at the time, slept outside in the cockpit and woke up to find a sea lion curled up between them, underneath a table. They screamed. A lot. Their dad woke up and chased the sea lion off the boat, fortunately for them. It made for a funny story afterwards, though.

Darwin’s Galapagos lacked any forms of civilization, unlike now. Sadly, a whopping 25,000 people occupy these formerly untouched beauties. Fortunately, though, people are only allowed to go to or live on three of the islands. I suppose this is an issue for another post. So, back to Darwin.

In the Galapagos, Darwin collected plants and animals to study when he got home. As always, he kept notebooks. Darwin talked to a whaling captain called Larson. They discussed biology and geology for a long time. Captain Larson commented that he could tell what island a tortoise came from by the shape of its shell. At the time, Charles thought nothing of it because he was still of the opinion that, like his friends in England thought, every species had a small leeway of change with well defined limits. After returning to his home, Charles reconsidered the remark. He decides it must mean that the tortoises are each reacting to a slightly different environment.

Galapagos Tortoise

I’ve seen all these animals and the experience has gotten me interested in biology. That is why I chose Darwin to study, because I know I didn’t completely understand evolution while I was there.

Nowhere else is there such a mind blowing display of the real way of nature. The beauty, the violence, and the passion to survive at all costs stand out in these wild islands.

Upon the Beagle’s return, Darwin settled down with his first cousin, Emma Darwin, and began formulating his theory. He considered the ideas which his peer naturalists in England held so firmly. They thought that an individual species had a preset limit to how much it could change. Charles was very much a freethinker, so he began to have his doubts about this. When Darwin asked why there had to be a limit, they lectured him or told him this was not true.

Darwin was always asking questions and trying to find truth. Writing his book, On the Origin of Species, let him explore and organize his notebooks which let him find the truth. First, he thought about transmutation. How much can a species change? Why wouldn’t it stay the same? In England, this situation had been observed. A species of white moth lived in a birch (a white tree) forest. When the forest burnt, and the trees became black and charred, the white moths disappeared. Instead, black moths “appeared”. These types of examples were thought about by Darwin. He and some other naturalists of that day agreed that a species could become altered by its environment. Darwin’s thoughts differed from the other naturalists of his day, about how much a species could change. Most naturalists thought that God had made every species and allowed them a small amount of room to react to their environment. Charles thought that a species could change unlimitedly, but change would only occur if it will help the animal survive.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” -Charles Darwin

After decades of thought and writing, Darwin concluded that species could change as much as is needed for them to survive. Factors causing evolution were big geological changes and sometimes man-made interferences. If the moths in the burnt forest only survived if they were black so they can blend in which hides them from predators, then owls would eat all the white moths. Say the forest grew back. A small genetic variation in the moths that were born white would allow more of them to survive. The white ones would be the ones to reproduce, so most baby moths would be born with the variation that makes their wings white. Any black moths would be eaten because they are too visible to predators.

Charles Darwin once said, “Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.” Three of his ten children died young. This hit Darwin very hard and made him question his theory. If his survival of the fittest theory was true, those three children had been too weak. This troubled Charles quite a bit, and slowly he became ill from all the stress. Charles Darwin died on April 19th, 1882.

Charles Darwin was an incredibly influential figure. With his book, On the Origin of Species, Darwin changed how people viewed the Church, animals, and themselves. He offered a complex but believable explanation about life. Darwin did not want to force people to believe in his way, he was simply giving an explanation and asking people to look at his idea and then decide what they want to think. Although there are still people who see life another way, which is perfectly fine, Darwin’s theory eventually became widely accepted. Whether or not you see it Darwin’s way is up to you, but try learning about it and then decide what you want to believe.

All photographs were taken by me, my mom, my dad, or my brother with ONE EXCEPTION: The sea lion photo was taken by Chris Elsay, a friend from the boat Stray Kitty

sources:
"Charles Darwin Quotes." Charles Darwin Quotes (Author of The Origin of Species). N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Feb. 2013.
"AboutDarwin.com - Home Page." AboutDarwin.com - Home Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Feb. 2013.
"Charles Darwin." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 02 June 2013. Web. 07 Feb. 2013.
Chambers, Paul. A Sheltered Life: The Unexpected History of the Giant Tortoise. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.
Darwin the Voyage That Shook the World. Dir. Steve Murray. Eagle, 2009.