Several million years ago, the Galápagos Islands popped, volcanically, out of the Pacific Ocean. The South American mainland being 600 miles away and nothing else nearby, each island was a tabula rasa. Various birds, lizards, sea mammals and seeds blew in and washed up. Biological colonization occurred by dumb luck. Very dumb luck, to judge by how the local critters flap, crawl and paddle up and present themselves to visiting omnivorous bipeds for examination of gustatory potential. Pirates, whalers and other nonmembers of the Sierra Club had an estimated 100,000 friendly, curious Galápagos giant tortoises for lunch. Isolation allowed unusual...