The Galapagos Islands: Ugly Creatures

Many of the birds of the Galapagos are cute including the boobies (especially the masked Nazca boobies), and the sea lions are adorable (especially the babies), but there are also many interesting creatures that are let us say, less attractive. This post is dedicated to them.

The most famous of these creatures are probably the giant tortoises. We spent a day off the ship starting with a visit to the Charles Darwin Foundation where we learned about their breeding program to maintain giant tortoise populations. When people began to visit the Galapagos, giant tortoises were taken as food, and because the females were smaller (about 200 pounds compared to 400 for mature males), most of the animals taken and eaten were females, which caused several sub-species of the long-lived giants to go extinct.

Later, we visited a location where the adult tortoises travel through on a consistent basis, and got to see a lot of them. They are very impressive creatures. And they can move faster than you think.

The other turtle species we saw were the Galapagos green sea turtle, which we saw on many of our outings, including while snorkeling. In fact, on one snorkeling adventure, there were so many turtles that it was hard to avoid touching them. Shana managed to run into one while we were moving backwards to avoid a shallow area and the rocky coast.

Moving further up the "ugly" scale, there are two different types of iguanas in the Galapagos: land and marine. The Galapagos land iguana is similar to iguanas in other parts of the world, and can grow quite large.

If you look carefully at the photo on the left above, you can see two iguanas, in the foreground is a male, while a female is just entering her den near the scrubbrush on the left.

Unlike the land iguanas, marine iguanas are unique to the Galapagos. Darwin called them "imps of darkness," and they are like mini Godzillas. They eat algae in the ocean, but come out of the water to rest and warm up in the sun. While we did see a couple while snorkeling, we saw many on the land. As you can see, the marine iguanas literally pile together in order to warm up in the sun.

Nonetheless, we did sometimes see individuals alone, often heading toward or away from a mass of others, but sometimes simply staying warm on a lone rock.

The number of these creatures that we often saw in one place was impressive. One of our fellow passengers provides a good counterpoint to the mass in this photo. All of the lines in the sand are from their tails.

The final creature we saw all over were the Sally Lightfoot crabs. As they age, the colors of these crabs become very vibrant with a red/orange base, but including many greens, blues and other colors. In reality, the crabs were not really very interesting, but they were very common and provided a backdrop on many of the islands we visisted. They are impressive for how they can hold on to the rocky terrain.

So, while not as cute as the birds or sea lions, we wanted to make sure that the tortoises, turtles, iguanas and crabs got their due as they definitely added to our learning in the Galapagos.

More soon,

Jeff and Shana