Where did Charles Darwin first make the observations that helped lead him to his theory of natural selection?
Darwin noticed that the birds and tortoises of the Galápagos Islands off the western coast of Ecuador tended to resemble species found on the nearby continent, while inhabitants of similar neighbouring islands in the Galápagos had quite different animal populations. Darwin learned that the finches he had brought from the Galápagos belonged to different species, not merely different varieties, as he had originally believed. He also learned that the mockingbirds were of three distinct species and that the Galápagos tortoises represented at least two species and that, like many of the specimens from the archipelago, they were native to the islands but to neither of the American continents.
