Bartholomew Island
One of the most interesting and captivating features that amaze our visitors when coming to Galapagos is the “tameness” of the creatures that inhabit this magical place. Personally, I prefer to use the word “indifferent” instead of tame, as the latter implies that animals were once wild and were domesticated, which is not the case in Galapagos. The remarkable indifference allows visitors to experience a feeling very difficult to describe; well feelings are hard to describe anyway, aren’t they? Not only are the animals that live here indifferent, but they also allow their astonished observers to get incredibly close without showing much concern. In this case, the Galapagos National Park has established rules to be observed while watching animals, so as to protect this unique indifference. We cannot pet or startle any of the animals; sincerely we do not need to do that in order to have experiences that will last forever. After some years working as a Naturalist on the islands, I still have the same deep feeling while experiencing such encounters. I found one of the best explanations for this odd animal behavior in a classical book in Science journalism called “The Song of the Dodo, Island Biogeography in an Age of Extincions”. When commenting this topic the author, David Quammen wrote:
“Tameness is the wrong word for this phenomenon, implying that the animals have been conditioned by experience to feel friendly towards humans. The reality is different: Evolution, not individual experience, has leached them of wariness. Those “tame” Galapagos animals are simply unwary, not merely towards humans but toward any potential enemy. …. We can do better than tameness, my own preferred term for this whole set of traits (including the loss of protective coloration and warning mechanisms, the prolonged infancy, the ingenuous nesting behavior, and the lost of inherent wariness) is ecological naïveté. These animals are not imbecilic. Evolution has prepared them for life in a little world that is simpler and more innocent than the big world”.
Sometimes some individuals like the lava lizard pictured today are not only indifferent but very curious as well. The small lava lizard was very cooperative with me; it was posing like a model. I conclude telling you readers that there is only one way to understand such phenomena, come here and experience for yourselves the “ecological naïveté” of our creatures…
One of the most interesting and captivating features that amaze our visitors when coming to Galapagos is the “tameness” of the creatures that inhabit this magical place. Personally, I prefer to use the word “indifferent” instead of tame, as the latter implies that animals were once wild and were domesticated, which is not the case in Galapagos. The remarkable indifference allows visitors to experience a feeling very difficult to describe; well feelings are hard to describe anyway, aren’t they? Not only are the animals that live here indifferent, but they also allow their astonished observers to get incredibly close without showing much concern. In this case, the Galapagos National Park has established rules to be observed while watching animals, so as to protect this unique indifference. We cannot pet or startle any of the animals; sincerely we do not need to do that in order to have experiences that will last forever. After some years working as a Naturalist on the islands, I still have the same deep feeling while experiencing such encounters. I found one of the best explanations for this odd animal behavior in a classical book in Science journalism called “The Song of the Dodo, Island Biogeography in an Age of Extincions”. When commenting this topic the author, David Quammen wrote:
“Tameness is the wrong word for this phenomenon, implying that the animals have been conditioned by experience to feel friendly towards humans. The reality is different: Evolution, not individual experience, has leached them of wariness. Those “tame” Galapagos animals are simply unwary, not merely towards humans but toward any potential enemy. …. We can do better than tameness, my own preferred term for this whole set of traits (including the loss of protective coloration and warning mechanisms, the prolonged infancy, the ingenuous nesting behavior, and the lost of inherent wariness) is ecological naïveté. These animals are not imbecilic. Evolution has prepared them for life in a little world that is simpler and more innocent than the big world”.
Sometimes some individuals like the lava lizard pictured today are not only indifferent but very curious as well. The small lava lizard was very cooperative with me; it was posing like a model. I conclude telling you readers that there is only one way to understand such phenomena, come here and experience for yourselves the “ecological naïveté” of our creatures…
