Walter Smith Jr., age 12, of Montgomery, Ala., for his question:
WHO NAMED THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS?
Galapagos Islands can be found in the Pacific Ocean about 500 miles west of Ecuador, and they belong to that country. the Spanish word for turtles, galapagos, gave the islands their name.
Strange and wonderful birds and animals live in the Galapagos. Included are giant turtles that weight more than 500 pounds. Penguins, widely believed to live only in the Antarctic, also live on the islands as do the rare cormorants that cannot fly. There are also mockingbirds of a type unknown anywhere else on earth.
The islands are made up of volcanic peaks and cover an area of 2,869 square miles. They were once known as the Enchanted Isles. Pirates used to bury stolen treasure there and castaways found the islands a refuge. Mutineers were sometimes left there.
Officially called the Archipilago de Colon, there are about 3,800 persons living on the Galapagos Islands today.
One of the most fantastic of all creatures, the lizards called iguanas, grow to be four feet long in the Galapagos.
More familiar creatures include herons, sea birds called boobies and scarlet crabs, which are the same as an Atlantic species from which they have been separated for possibly 35 million years.
In 1835, Charles Darwin made a study of the animals found on the 15 islands.
The five largest islands are Isabela (Albemarle), Santa Cruz (Indefatigable ), San Cristobal (Chatham), Fernandina (Narborough) and San Salvador (James).
In 1942, Ecuador allowed United States troops to guard the Panama Canal from the base which was established on the Galapagos. The United States returned the base to Ecuador in 1946, after World War II.
The Galapagos Islands has played a part in the geographic distribution theory of evolution since much evidence of evolution comes from plants and animals that live on these islands.
On the Galapagos are 26 kinds of land birds, all resembling species found in western South Amercia. But 23 of these species seem to have changed since they reached the islands, for the Galapagos birds are distinct species. '
Comparable differences are shown by lizards and tortoises, of which there were 11 species on as many different islands. They apparently developed there because of changes that took place after their ancestors drifted from the mainland of South America.