60 Fun Facts About Galápagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands are a province of which country?

Ecuador formally claimed the islands on 12 February 1832, and they remain the country's Galápagos Province.

Roughly how far west of the South American mainland do the islands lie?

That is 485 nautical miles, far enough that the islands were never reliably reached by pre-Columbian peoples.

The 1570 Ortelius map labelled the archipelago 'Insulae de los Galopegos', a name meaning what?

Herman Melville later called them The Encantadas, the enchanted isles, in his 1854 sketches.

Who accidentally discovered the islands in 1535?

The Bishop of Panama was drifting off course on his way to Peru when the current carried his ship to the islands.

Charles Darwin visited the islands aboard which ship?

The ship reached the islands on 15 September 1835 and left on 20 October, only five weeks in total.

In which year did Darwin reach the Galápagos?

The Beagle had left England in 1831; 1859 is the year On the Origin of Species was published.

Which is by far the largest island in the archipelago?

It is made of six coalescing volcanoes and its northern tip crosses the equator.

Volcán Wolf, the highest peak in the islands, is named after Theodor Wolf, who was what?

Wolf Island in the far north of the archipelago honours the same 19th-century scientist.

How high is Volcán Wolf?

Its prominence of more than 1,500 m makes it an 'ultra' peak despite its modest height.

The archipelago sits on which tectonic plate?

The plate slides east-southeast over a stationary mantle plume, so the oldest islands lie to the east and have already sunk.

Which island is the youngest and furthest west in the group?

Its volcano, La Cumbre, is one of the most active in the islands and erupted in June 2018.

In which year did UNESCO first list the islands as a World Heritage Site?

A biosphere reserve listing followed in 1985, and the islands spent 2007-2010 on the World Heritage in Danger list.

What is the capital of Galápagos Province?

It sits on San Cristóbal, near where FitzRoy first dropped anchor in 1835, and is smaller than the main town on Santa Cruz.

Which town on Santa Cruz is the most populous in the islands?

Its main street, Avenida Charles Darwin, runs from the dock to the Charles Darwin Research Station.

Roughly how many people lived in the islands in 2020?

In 1941 there were only about 810 residents; tourism has driven most of the growth since the 1960s.

The national park was declared in 1959, the centenary of what?

The park began operating in 1968 and was Ecuador's first national park.

Approximately what share of the islands' land area is national park?

The only exceptions are the areas that had already been colonised when the park was created.

The Galápagos penguin is the only penguin found where?

The cold Humboldt and Cromwell currents let it survive on the equator, and it is the second-smallest penguin after the little penguin.

Marine iguanas forage in the sea for what food?

They are the only living lizards that feed in the ocean, and they are far more graceful in the water than on land.

How do marine iguanas get rid of the excess salt they swallow?

The expelled brine often lands on their own heads and dries into a white crust.

During long El Niño food shortages, marine iguanas have shrunk in length by as much as what?

Connective tissue alone cannot account for the change, so scientists think the bones themselves shorten and later regrow.

Darwin recorded that someone had nicknamed the marine iguanas what?

He also called them 'most disgusting, clumsy Lizards', which is unkind for a man who owed them so much.

The vampire ground finch supplements its diet with the blood of which seabirds?

Several finches may feed on one bird at once, and they also eat the hosts' eggs, so the victims are reluctant to leave the nest.

The vampire finch is endemic to which two islands?

These are the archipelago's remote northernmost islets, where seeds run short in the dry season.

The seabird name 'booby' comes from a Spanish word meaning what?

The birds are clumsy on land and were so tame that sailors could simply walk up and grab them, hence the insult.

The blue-footed booby's foot colour comes from pigments obtained from where?

Well-fed birds have brighter feet, which is why males show them off in a slow high-stepping courtship dance.

The flightless cormorant lives on how many of the islands?

It is the largest living cormorant, with wings about one-third the size a bird of its weight would need to fly.

The waved albatross breeds almost exclusively on which island?

Its entire breeding range covers about 9 square kilometres, though it forages up to 100 km away to feed its chicks.

Lonesome George was the last known tortoise from which island?

He was first spotted there in 1971 by a Hungarian snail specialist and moved to Santa Cruz for his own safety.

In which year did Lonesome George die?

He was thought to be about 100 years old, and every attempt to breed him with females from related islands had failed.

Who was Lonesome George's keeper for four decades, giving his name to the tortoise breeding centre?

It was Llerena who found George dead in his corral on the morning of 24 June 2012.

A tortoise nicknamed after his adopted zoo fathered around 900 offspring for Española. Which US city hosted him?

Nobody at the zoo knew which island he came from; he was retired from breeding and released into the wild in 2020.

The Galápagos tortoise, the largest living tortoise, can weigh up to how much?

Size varies enormously by island: Pinzón tortoises top out at a mere 76 kg.

Harriet, a captive Galápagos tortoise, lived to at least what age?

That makes the species one of the longest-lived vertebrates; wild individuals routinely pass 100.

How long can a Galápagos tortoise survive without drinking?

That endurance made them living larders on whaling ships, which stacked them in the hold for months.

Tortoises with 'saddleback' shells and long necks come from what kind of island?

The raised front of the shell lets them stretch upward to reach cactus pads, a difference Darwin noted in 1835.

Acting governor Nicholas Lawson told Darwin he could do what on seeing a tortoise?

Darwin noted the remark but only grasped its importance after he had mixed up his own specimens.

Post Office Bay, where whalers left mail in a wooden barrel, is on which island?

Visitors still drop postcards in the barrel without stamps and hand-deliver any addressed near their home.

The islands' first permanent resident, a sailor marooned from 1807 to 1809, was what nationality?

Patrick Watkins survived by growing vegetables and trading with whalers, then stole a longboat and sailed to Guayaquil.

A prank by a helmsman from which Nantucket whaleship set Charles Island ablaze in 1820?

The same ship was sunk by a sperm whale months later, the disaster that inspired Moby-Dick.

The English buccaneer who mapped the islands in 1684 was who?

He named the islands after English kings and nobles, and Ecuador later swapped most of those names for Spanish ones.

The United States built the islands' first airport, on Baltra, to guard the approaches to what?

Aircraft from Seymour Airport hunted German and Japanese submarines, and the base passed to Ecuador after the war.

Which cool current flowing up from the south keeps the equatorial islands surprisingly chilly?

It meets the warm Panama Current from the north and the nutrient-rich Cromwell Current welling up from the west.

The critically endangered Galápagos pink land iguana lives only on which volcano?

It was first noticed in 1986 but not recognised as a separate species until 2009.

Sierra Negra has the largest of what among the Galápagos volcanoes?

The depression measures roughly 7 by 9 km yet is only about 100 m deep, the shallowest on the island.

In 2021 a new protected area of seamounts northeast of the islands was announced under what name?

The name means 'brotherhood', and the addition expanded the protected sea area by about half.

Three goats released by fishermen on one island in 1959 had grown to a herd of roughly what size by 1973?

Feral goats stripped the island of vegetation and were only cleared by a massive eradication campaign.

In 1892 the islands were officially renamed in honour of which explorer?

The name Archipiélago de Colón marked the 400th anniversary of his first voyage, though nobody uses it.

Sally Lightfoot crabs have been seen performing what service for marine iguanas?

The bright red crabs are common on the black lava shores and are otherwise mainly used by fishermen as bait.

During the 1982-83 El Niño, roughly what share of marine iguanas starved to death?

Warm water kills off the green algae they eat, leaving only red algae they cannot digest.

The Galápagos hawk is thought to survive as only about how many mating pairs?

It is the islands' apex predator, and unusually one female often mates with several males who all help raise the chick.

The Galápagos sea lion was long treated as a subspecies of which other sea lion?

It is slightly smaller than its northern cousin, with a shorter muzzle, and lounges on the benches of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno.

The Galápagos land iguana gets most of its moisture from which plant?

The cactus makes up nearly 80% of its diet on islands where fresh water is almost non-existent.

Which ornithologist told Darwin his Galápagos 'blackbirds and grosbeaks' were all finches?

Gould reported that 25 of the 26 land birds were new species found nowhere else, which set Darwin thinking.

Roughly how many species make up the group known as Darwin's finches?

The key differences are in beak size and shape, each adapted to a different food, from seeds to cactus flowers to blood.

Galápagos Province is divided into how many cantons?

Each canton groups several islands around one of the inhabited ones: San Cristóbal, Santa Cruz and Isabela.

What was the tanker whose 2001 grounding and spill exposed the islands' vulnerability called?

Winds and shifting currents dispersed most of the slick before it did major damage.

The islands were placed on UNESCO's World Heritage in Danger list in 2007 and removed in which year?

The listing cited invasive species, unchecked tourism and overfishing.

By about which year had hunters wiped out the tortoise subspecies of Charles Island?

Darwin saw only shells there in 1835, just 15 years before the last animals disappeared.

The Charles Darwin Research Station was established on which island in 1964?

It is the field base of the Charles Darwin Foundation, an NGO constituted in Belgium that advises Ecuador on managing the islands.