This is the best summary I could come up with:

At Cambridge, Darwin was a member of the Glutton Club, a group of students devoted to devouring “birds and beasts which were before unknown to human palate,” according to a college friend.

They tasted hawk and a heron-like wading bird called a bittern, but the club dissolved after trying to eat a brown owl, “which was indescribable,” Darwin reported.

(Don’t worry: Once he realized what they were dining on, Darwin made everyone stop eating and sent a package of leftover bones, skin and feathers back to England.)

The list of animals and plants that scientists have eaten includes: bluegill, sea urchin, ants, bees, beetles, weeds, maggots, blackberries, abalone, pink cusk-eel, cicadas, roe deer, woodcocks, crayfish and seabird.

Some of the better dishes she tried featured pulled nutria, house sparrow drumsticks and bullfrog legs, with garlic mustard pate and Himalayan blackberries on the side.

And in Wassersug’s opinion, the curiosity that led scientists to study the world makes them want to experience it more fully: through seeing, smelling, feeling and, yes, even tasting.

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