I don't feel drunk, but I just spelled iguana with a q instead of a g and Google had to tell me I got it wrong. Obviously, I disconnected my brain somehow.
These guys are also extremely unique, and they share a few traits with the Hoatzin, so they seem to be fitting for the next post.
Marine Iguanas are from the Galapagos, and are sometimes called Christmas Lizards because of their coloring. Pic from Padi, below, to show why. Their colors only look like this during mating season though, from January to April depending on the island.
What makes them really unique though, is that they swim.
Pic from Padi, below.
It's not just them crossing streams or something, they go into the ocean and dive down for seaweed to eat. They're the only seagoing lizard known to science so far. Before you start thinking about crocodiles or something though, lizards and crocs are both reptiles, but they're separate groups within the reptile grouping. So, crocs aren't lizards.
Interestingly, these guys tend to spend the mornings sunning themselves to warm up so that they don't get too cold when they go into the ocean later. Their main food is seaweed, so they have to get to the deeper water and dive down 30 feet to get to the larger concentrations of greenery, which they gnaw on with their teeth. Their blunt noses helps get better angles to scape their teeth, and they use their claws to cling to the rocks so they don't get knocked away. They don't have gills, so they just have to hold their breath. Since this is their evolutionary choice, they can hold their breaths for a while, up to 60 minutes sometimes.
Since that might not be too interesting to you since a lot of people can go swimming for an hour, how about this? They keep ending up with toxic amounts of sodium in them, so they evolved to get rid of it without having to lose a lot of water with it. They sneeze it out. They sneeze salt. That is just...weird and hilarious.
Marine iguanas have been around for a very long time, so they're kinda like tiny dinosaurs, and they are partially the inspiration for a certain lizard that pretty much everyone knows. Godzilla. There are a lot of other possible inspirations, but this is one of them.
Like how the Hoatzin, among so many others, has had trouble being listed out taxonomically, it's only recently (comparatively at least) been realized that there are at least 5 subspecies of the Marine Iguanas. Fittingly, the Darwin Foundation is the one that I got the article from, link below. Another article says 7 types, and a third said 11, so we'll leave that be. Awesomely, one is called a Godzilla Marine Iguana.
As a final thing, when food is scarce, they can literally shrink by as much as 20%. That means they don't have to worry about getting as much food to survive.
There are other interesting things to learn about them, but I'll leave that to you. They're cool, and there are a lot of really awesome pictures of them to see. I'll come back soon to tell you about something else that will hopefully be just as cool, if in a different way.
Sources:
Latin Roots Travel-- Marine Iguana
Darwin Foundation-- 5 subspecies of Marine Iguana
Vanderbilt Museum-- Marine Iguana--Take with Grain of Salt
Animal Diversity Web-- Marine Iguana
World Wildlife-- Marine Iguana
National Geographic-- Marine Iguana
Galapagos Conservation-- Marine Iguana
Happy Gingo-- Galapagos Marine Iguanas
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