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Happy BD, Young Mr. Darwin, A Glutton for the Bizarre

"Darwin was an unusual gourmet. He had a distinctly scientific approach to eating and was never more satisfied than when digesting the rarest species known to the palate.

As a student at Cambridge, Darwin presided over the Glutton Club, which met weekly in order to seek out and eat 'strange flesh'. They tried hawk and bittern but the Gluttons chickened out after digesting a particularly stringy old brown owl, deciding to concentrate their studies on the effects of the port accompanying their meat instead.

Perhaps saddened by his fellow students' lack of inquisitiveness, Darwin was comforted once he set sail on the Beagle where he was willingly fed armadillos, which 'taste & look like duck', and an unnamed, 20lb chocolate-coloured rodent which, he announced, was 'the best meat I ever tasted'.'

Chloe Diski, for The Guardian

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