Any day you get to quote Charles Darwin is a good day indeed. (OK, I actually had to paraphrase, but still.)

Pity the poor Galapagos tortoise. An icon of evolution, he also apparently makes a nice dinner. When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos in 1835, he noted that tortoises differed from island to island. It was one of the key pieces of evidence that later shaped his ideas about evolution.

He also noted something that in hindsight looks particularly prescient: The islanders found some of the tortoises particularly tasty.

So while the Galapagos tortoise is an icon of scientific history, its numbers are dwindling as the human population in the Galapagos continues to grow.