In 1835 Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, was exploring an island in the Galápagos archipelago when he encountered “two large tortoises, each of which must have weighed at least two hundred pounds”. He had never seen anything like them. He became entranced by the animals and took at least one back to England as a pet.
Large tortoises are still associated with the Galápagos Islands, about 1,000km off the coast of Ecuador, as well as Aldabra Island in the Seychelles.
