The Galápagos Islands are the island group Charles Darwin visited in 1835 whose wildlife influenced evolutionary thinking.
Darwin visited several Galápagos islands aboard HMS Beagle in September and October 1835. He observed that related animals differed from island to island, including mockingbirds and tortoises. These observations later helped him develop ideas about common ancestry and adaptation.
The popular story that Darwin immediately invented natural selection after seeing finches is too simple. His field notes and later comparisons contributed to a much longer process of reasoning. The finches became famous partly because ornithologist John Gould later identified them as a related group, but Darwin initially did not recognize the importance of all the specimens he collected.