Wildlife of the Galápagos Islands
wildlife of the Galápagos archipelago
The Galápagos Islands are off the west coast of South America straddling the equator. The Galápagos are located at the confluence of several currents including the cold Humboldt Current travelling north from South America and the Panama Current travelling south from Central America. These currents cool the islands and provide the perfect environment for the wildlife there.
The islands are volcanic in origin and were never attached to any continent. Galápagos wildlife arrived by flying, floating or swimming. Birds might have flown there by accident and decided to settle there due to favourable conditions. Mammals or reptiles might have floated on a piece of wood and drifted to the islands. Some animals like marine iguanas, may have swum there. In most environments the larger mammals are the predators at the top of the food chain, but those animals did not make it to the Galápagos. Thus the giant Galápagos tortoise became the largest land animal.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wildlife of the Galápagos Islands” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.