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The green iguana is one of the more popular reptile pets in the United States. The United States imports large quantities of green iguanas from iguana farms in Central and South America each year. Green iguanas can be found in almost every pet store in the United States.

Basic Information

The species was first officially named by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1758, and a large number of subspecies have been identified over the past two centuries, but have since been recognized only as varieties of the same species in different regions. Native to Central and South America and its surrounding islands.

Scientific name: Iguanaiguana

Kingdom: Animalia

Door: Chord Gate

Class: Reptile

Order: Lepidaceae

Family: American iguanidae

Genus: American Iguana

Species: Green iguana

Growth characteristics and environment

It grows quickly, grows into a large body, and requires a large feeding space.

Vegan, like humidity and high temperature, the temperature needs to be controlled at 26~35 degrees Celsius, and the humidity is 60%~80%

It is basically a rainforest environment, and the humidity can be appropriately reduced as the green iguana grows up

Wild habits and foraging

Green iguanas are herbivores that eat the flowers, leaves, and fruits of more than 100 species of plants. One of the favorite foods of the green iguana in Panama is the wild plum blossom.

Although there are many kinds of plants available for them to eat, they should be fed with plants with a 2:1 calcium-phosphorus ratio, such as turnips, kale, pumpkin, mangoes, and parsnips, and try to avoid foods that are high in oxalic acid.

There is some debate about whether captive green iguanas should be fed animal protein. There is evidence that green iguanas in the wild eat locusts and tree snails, which are often "add-ons" on plant leaves or flowers. Wild adult green iguanas have been observed eating bird eggs.

The green iguana is a diurnal arboreal lizard, which is a vegan animal and is mainly a plant-based food, which can be fed with vegetable leaves and fruits. In the wild, green iguanas mainly inhabit the forest canopy near streams, so water basins are indispensable equipment for the breeding environment. Attention must be paid to the distance of the insulated lamps, and the accident of scalding often occurs. The extra-long tail will also break off on its own to protect itself in times of crisis, so be careful when playing with the tail, but the broken tail will regenerate, so it will not cause permanent damage. Due to the large demand for pets, there are large-scale professional farms in various countries in South America for artificial breeding, which can be said to be the largest production of lizards.

Green iguanas have holes on the inside of their hind legs (males generally have larger holes than females), and males have larger neck lobes than females. Mating takes place in trees, and the mating female green iguana lays her eggs in a hole dug in the ground, covering up the soil and ignoring the nests, so that the hatchling lizards are self-reliant from an early age. However, female lizards sometimes dig a few more burrows to disturb predators, and green iguanas lay a large number of eggs, often laying 30-50 eggs in a single litter, which can hatch after 75-90 days. Newborn baby lizards take two years to reach adulthood, and green iguanas can live for more than 15 years if kept correctly.

Considerations:

1. Green iguanas can grow to 1.5-2m in 3 years, do you have space to accommodate such a big guy?

2. The green iguana comes from the tropical rainforest and needs enough temperature to grow healthily, can it be provided with insulation equipment?

3. It requires UVB (ultraviolet) radiation, vitamin and calcium supplementation, the supply of various vegetables and various equipment of the breeding box, which requires a lot of money.

4. It takes a lot of time to clean up feces and food residues for it every day.

5. No matter how old a child is, it is not suitable to take care of the green iguana, and parents need to bear the responsibility of keeping this animal in their possession.

6. Green iguanas carry Salmonella, which can be transmitted to humans through poor hygiene and will cause bacterial infections. This is especially true for the elderly, children, and people with weakened immune systems. Everyone who has touched this animal or cleaned up the breeding grounds should wash their hands. (In fact, as a pet, the risk of salmonella infection in green iguanas is relatively low). [1]

Buying Points

Green iguanas of different sizes may be seen in pet stores, and some of them may have been caught from the wild.

Some were sold by other breeders. So they either arrive after long journeys or are kept incorrectly for a period of time, all of which greatly increase the chance of iguanas getting sick and injured, so it is important to choose a healthy green iguana. The following points can be considered:

Overall appearance

Whether the skin is clean, bright and tidy, firm and elastic, and there are no signs of scratches or bites.

Whether there are signs of burns on the abdomen (because burns can easily be caused with a bottom warmer)

Do you have feces or other dirt on your abdomen? Usually individuals with dirt are frail or sick.

Are there any feces or urate (white substance) on the cloaca? If there is one, it is possible that the instance is infected with the parasite.

When you play with its limbs, is there resistance? Individuals who are frail and sickly will have a weaker resistance.

Check the whole body for lumps and abnormal protrusions.

Do you have some dark red or orange spots on your skin?

Is the shape of the hind leg normal, and is there any induration or lump? Induration may be a fracture, and a lump may be a metabolic bone disease caused by calcium deficiency.

Does the skin have a lot of wrinkles? Is it dull?

When observing it crawling, is it normal and lame? Are the limbs strong?

Are the toes and tail intact, missing or broken?

Head and facial features

Are the eyes hazy, watery, and sedimentate?

Is there mucus in the nose? Got a runny nose?

Is the inside of the mouth pale or dark red? Are there abnormal spots on the upper and lower jaws and tongue?

Are the sides of the jaw the same size?

Feeding focus

Food variety

Green iguanas are herbivores, and in nature they only eat the leaves and flowers of plants. But unfortunately, in captivity, green iguanas simply do not eat the food they eat in nature. So we have to provide them with enough and the right food to ensure that they grow up healthy and don't get sick. It is important to pay attention to the variety of food when serving food, so that the green iguana can get a balanced nutrition. Green iguanas can easily get sick due to nutritional disorders, such as calcium deficiency, if fed a single food for a long time. So providing the right food is very important in feeding. Some information about food is given below. It is generally accepted in herpetology that juvenile green iguanas and adult green iguanas eat the same food.

The following ratios are effective for raising iguanas:

30%-70% solid vegetables

30%-70% leafy vegetables

15% fruit

0-10% cereals

The crux of the matter is that those vegetables are nutritious, and in fact feeding the wrong food is the number one killer when raising green iguanas. Remember to provide your green iguana with as many types of food as possible on a regular basis to ensure their health. (It's a good idea to offer 10 different foods.) ）

menu

The following foods contain goiterin, so try to feed them sparingly

Tofu, red cabbage (cabbage), cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Chinese cabbage. Of course, there are many other vegetables that are suitable for green iguanas. But there are some foods that should be avoided, and below I will mention some harmful ones. I'm not giving you this menu to try to copy it, I'm just giving you an example of what kind of food should be fed. You should make your own menu based on nutrition. Remember: Try to offer as many types of vegetables as possible. Below I have listed some important information about the different types of vegetables. This information should be taken very seriously, as malnutrition is very common in captivity, and it is caused by the fact that the breeder does not pay attention to food choices. On the other hand, if you choose the wrong type of vegetables, even if you have a variety of vegetables, you can still cause malnutrition.

Calcium and phosphorus

In general, the food supplied to green iguanas is twice as high as phosphorus. However, in general, a 1:1 and 2:1 ratio of calcium to phosphorus is acceptable, and although a 2:1 ratio is ideal, even slightly greater than 2:1 is harmless. This ratio is important for the growth and maintenance of bones, as well as for the contraction of muscles and the proper functioning of other body functions. As long as the supply of this calcium and phosphorus ratio is ignored for a short period of time, it will cause bone metabolism and some other diseases. And usually, hypocalcemia is more likely to occur than hypophosphatem. This means that in general, green iguana keepers often do not provide enough calcium to their green iguanas instead of phosphorus. Another issue to be aware of when it comes to nutrition is vitamin D3. Vitamin D3 plays a key role in the absorption of calcium. If D3 is deficient, green iguanas will not be able to absorb calcium from their food. D3 can be obtained from food and by irradiation to ultraviolet (UVB) rays from the skin. But green iguanas have a hard time absorbing D3 from their food, so they mainly rely on their skin to produce it. Therefore, it is very important to give the green iguana enough UVB exposure. Calcium deficiency may be the most common problem when raising green iguanas, but if you oversupply calcium, such as long-term feeding of high-calcium foods, it is also not good for the health of green iguanas. Another point is to give it enough light to produce the necessary vitamin D3.

dangerous

In this section, you will be taught how to avoid feeding the green iguana the wrong food. The key is to diversify, if you only provide one or two foods for a long time, your green iguana will definitely suffer from various diseases due to nutritional problems. Listed below are some of the things that can cause problems.

oxalic acid

Oxalic acid reacts with calcium to form calcium oxalate, a salt that is not easily soluble. So in the food given to green iguanas, those vegetables rich in oxalic acid, such as: spinach, rhubarb, beets, celery stalks, etc., should be avoided. Therefore, I recommend that you do not use these vegetables as the main food in your daily feeding, and only provide them in small amounts. Otherwise, it is still easy to get calcium-deficient bone disease.

Goiter-causing cabbage

Just like those rich in oxalic acid, some vegetables should not be overfed. Diseases such as cabbage, cauliflower, cauliflower, etc., can cause thyroid problems in green iguanas.

Tannins

Tannins coagulate proteins, making them less digestible and absorbed by green iguanas, and they don't make it difficult to utilize iron and vitamin B12. Therefore, it is also necessary to avoid overeating such foods, including: spinach, carrots, bananas, grapes, lettuce, rhubarb, onions.

So from the above, the key is to use a variety of foods, if you eat a small range of foods, it will lead to nutritional problems. In short, remember to be sure to eat a variety of foods.

Vitamin and calcium supplementation

Even if they are able to provide a sufficiently varied diet to green iguanas, they may still develop malnutrition. Therefore, it is still necessary to add vitamins and minerals to food. Because green iguanas grow rapidly during their juvenile years, they need more vitamins and calcium than adult green iguanas, and in general they should be added with a pinch of calcium and vitamins at every other meal. For adult individuals, supplementation once or twice a week is sufficient. There are a variety of supplements available on the market, and I would like to give a few suggestions:

a. For vitamin supplementation, you can mash the kind of medicine used by humans and give it to the green iguana.

b. For calcium supplementation, it is recommended to use only those calcium tablets that only contain calcium and D3, rather than those that also contain phosphorus, because this does not have much effect on improving the low ratio of calcium to phosphorus in food.

water

Like many creatures, green iguanas can go without food for a while, but if they don't have water to drink, they die. So you should give your green iguana a bowl of water so that it can have water to drink when it wants to. However, care should be taken to keep the water clean, preferably by being able to change it every day. But many people think that they have never seen green iguanas drinking water, because the vegetables they eat already contain a lot of water, and most of the water they need is obtained from food. But even so, you still need to prepare a bowl of water for them, because sometimes the water of the food alone is not enough, for example, when they eat less food and eat drier food, they need to rehydrate extra

Time of feeding

Green iguanas should be fed every day, and the best time to feed is between 9 and 11 o'clock, as green iguanas need to bask in the sun (natural or artificial) in the morning to raise the temperature of their bodies before they can start eating. However, in nature, green iguanas eat in the early afternoon, but it doesn't hurt that you prepare your food in the morning so that the green iguana can eat it at any time.

How to feed

The food should be cut into small pieces, as for how small, this is determined by the size of your iguana, in short, do not choke on them. In addition, the food should be mixed thoroughly, because green iguanas will be picky eaters, and if they do not mix their food well, they will pick and choose what they like to eat, which can lead to malnutrition.

Grind the calcium tablets into powder and mix them with food and feed them.

Vivarium

The material of the vivarium

Most people usually use fish tanks as terrarium for green iguanas, as they are the easiest to buy and the most readily available. You can also use an iron cage to make a terrarium, and you can also use wood and glass windows to make a terrarium. If you use the fish tank directly, the ventilation will not be good. Using an iron cage is not conducive to heat preservation.

The size of the vivarium

If you have enough space, you should provide as large terrarium as possible. Green iguanas are arboreal animals, and in the wild they spend most of their time in trees. When they are young, they are relatively active on the ground, so as they grow, they will climb more and more. Therefore, the terrarium should be made relatively high, not long. The following are the minimum dimensions of the vivarium: the height is equal to its body length (including the tail), the length is 1.5 times its body length, and the width is 2/3 of its body length. In this way, the green iguana can crawl, walk and turn around more freely. If the space is too small, it will become sluggish.

Toys inside the terrarium

It is best to provide branches in the box so that the green iguana can climb. Branches should preferably be a little thicker than the body of the green iguana. Place the branches diagonally inside the box.

Heating and lighting

Many people solve the two problems of heating and lighting at the same time. With an incandescent lamp, it can be used for both heating and lighting. Placing the lamp on one corner of the box creates an environment with temperature gradients in the box. Directly below the lamp is a sunbathing spot so that the green iguana can warm up in the morning. It is a good idea to place thermometers in different places in the vivarium so that you can know the temperature of the entire tank. In general, the coldest part of the box is also around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. In general, green iguanas need to have an internal temperature of 88 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 10 hours a day in order for it to have normal digestion. It is best not to put the lamp directly in the box, as it is easy for green iguanas to crawl on the lamp and cause burns. Green iguanas rely on bacteria in their bodies to digest food, and bacteria need a relatively high temperature environment to function, so it is necessary to ensure sufficient temperature, otherwise i green iguanas will cause malnutrition due to indigestion.

Ultraviolet

It is very important that the green iguana is exposed to ultraviolet rays. They need to be exposed to ultraviolet light to synthesize vitamin D3 in the skin, which promotes calcium absorption. Sunlight is the best option, and if you can't get enough sunlight, you must have UV lamps (especially UVB lamps) for them. Be careful not to expose your green iguana to ultraviolet rays through glass or plexiglass, as these substances attenuate ultraviolet rays very strongly, and a thin layer of glass can remove 95% of ultraviolet rays. You should not look at the UV lamp with your eyes, because too strong UV rays are harmful to people.

Light period

The light cycle simply refers to how long a green iguana needs to be lit each day. It is generally recommended to give them 14 hours a day with lamps and ultraviolet light. However, it must be ensured that there are dark and no lights at night, and if the lights are on for a long time, it will make the green iguana nervous.

Bedding

The principle of bedding selection is to facilitate cleaning and drying. Many people like to use newspapers as bedding because they can be used and thrown away. In short, do not use wood chips, sand and other substances that are easy for green iguanas to swallow.

humidity

The green iguana is a species of lizard that lives in high temperatures and humidity in Central and South America. Higher humidity is good for their skin, but it is difficult to maintain high humidity in captivity, not only because of the complexity of the devices used to maintain it, but also because of the difficulty of maintaining hygiene in such a hot and humid environment. Because it is easy to breed bacteria under the action of high temperature and humidity, as well as food and excrement.

airy

Ventilation issues are often overlooked. If the terrarium is made of barbed wire, ventilation is of course not a problem. Even a glass tank with a glass lid is fine, but you can't use a glass tank for fish farming that has a completely sealed lid. If you want to use a cylinder, it is better to use a cylinder with a ventilation hole next to it, so that there will be good ventilation.

Introduction to care

Body structure

First, let's take a look at the various components of the green iguana and their respective roles.

Nose and mouth

Like humans, the green iguana has a nose and a mouth, but its nose is not used to smell smells, its nostrils are used to breathe and expel salt. Its mouth is used to eat and bite, while its tongue is used to distinguish smells. So you may see that the green iguana often sticks its tongue out, but it actually detects its surroundings.

eye

Eyes, of course, are used to see. Sometimes when you pat it on the head or neck, it closes its eyes. The reason for this is not well understood, but it certainly wasn't done because of discomfort or pain.

eardrum

The small discs on both sides of the head are its ears, or eardrums. Most reptiles are deaf, but green iguanas are hearing. Therefore, this should be taken into account when turning on the stereo or TV. While most green iguanas are not affected by loud noises, it is best not to use too loud noises if you feel that your green iguana will be nervous in that environment.

chin

Under the ear there is a round patch of skin, like a spot, called a sybtympanicplate. The subtympanic disc has no specific physiological role, but it is possible to distinguish different species of iguanas from these subtympanic discs. If you go to a pet store and buy green iguanas, you will see a lot of small lizards, and if you don't have a tympanic disc, it's probably just some kind of water dragon, not a green iguana. Underneath the jawbone, there is a large body of skin hanging from it, called a dewlap. When threatened, it opens its dewlap, making it appear larger and stronger, in order to scare enemies away.

Strands

In the green iguana there is a row of small protruding holes on the hind legs, and these protrusions are called femoral holes. Especially as your green iguana grows, you'll notice some hard, wax-like substances secreting from the femoral pores. It is through these substances that the male marks his territory. You can tell the sex of a green iguana by the appearance of the oribes, which is described in detail in the section on gender.

Back and abdomen

There is a drainage hole between the roots of the hind legs of the green iguana, through which the green iguana excretes waste and reproduces offspring.

excreta

Most green iguanas excrete once a day, and it is rare to excrete more than once a day, although some excrete once every other day. The excrement is made up of three parts, one is a long strip of solid; One part is a viscous liquid; There is also a white substance (a bit like chalk ash when it dries), and this part is mainly composed of urate. The green iguana's excrement is supposed to be made up of these three parts, although the amount of each part may vary from day to day. There are many breeders who want to train the green iguana so that it will consciously go to the fixed point to excrete, because it makes the clean-up easier. It is said that someone has succeeded in soaking the green iguana in a pool of warm water, usually it will excrete in warm water, so that it slowly gets used to excreting in the pool, and then the water is removed and replaced with a newspaper in the pool, and then it will get used to excreting on the newspaper.

Another simple way is to spread the newspaper there if your green iguana is often excreting somewhere in the terrarium. Many times green iguanas like to excrete in soft places, such as blankets, newspapers, etc.

grow

Green iguanas grow very rapidly until the age of 2-3 years. The rate of growth varies depending on individual differences and the quality of food. Malnutrition in early childhood can make individuals smaller in adulthood. When it reaches 3 years of age, it slows down its growth, and the IG can even grow up to 6 feet long (with a tail 2-3 times the size of its body) and weigh 18 pounds, although in captivity, they are usually smaller than individuals grown in the wild.

gender

Many breeders want to know if their green iguana is male or female. When green iguanas are young, it is difficult to distinguish male and female from their appearance, but when they grow up, they can be distinguished by some physical characteristics. One of the biggest differences is that in the femoral pores of their thighs, the males have larger femoral pores, and the male femoral pores secrete waxy substances, while the females secrete very little. There are also differences in body length, with males being larger than females, with wider cheeks and more pronounced protrusions on their backs. In addition, when they are sexually mature, the male's vent hole is more prominent near it, because there is ** there.

The right catch

Don't just grab the middle of its body from above with one hand and lift it up. It should be held up from below with two hands.

Nail cleaning

By now you should have noticed that the green iguana is armed with 12 sharp claws. It's best to keep these claws neat, because if they're too long, they can hurt itself, its roommates (if you have multiple green iguanas), and crucially, its owner. There are many ways to trim its claws, for example it can be cut with human nail clippers, but since human nails are flat, using human nail clippers will cause them an uncomfortable feeling, so it is better to use nail clippers that cut the nails of birds or cats and dogs, because this type of nail clippers is more suitable for cutting round nails, then the green iguana will feel a little more comfortable.

When repairing them, it is best to have some hemostatic medicine on hand so that they can be used to stop the bleeding in case of injury. To repair the nails of a green iguana, just cut off the tip of the nail, not the whole nail, because the base of the nail has blood vessels and nerves, and it will hurt the green iguana to cut it off. So just remove the sharp tips of your nails.

Where did it come from

Everyone knows that the green iguana is a very popular pet lizard in all countries in the world, according to statistics, the United States alone will import 500,000 young lizards a year, and the demand for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan is also very large, including China, there are more and more people raising green iguanas.

So, where did all those green iguanas come from? It turned out that breeders in Mexico, Honduras, Paraguay and other countries of origin of green iguanas saw the market demand and established many large-scale breeding farms for green iguanas, raising a large number of green iguanas to supply export demand. At present, some farms established in South America are relatively backward in terms of equipment and relatively small scale, and most of them adopt extensive breeding methods, and can be raised directly in the wild by enclosing a piece of woodland.

In the United States, the geography and climate of Florida are suitable for the breeding of green iguanas, and the breeders there adopt scientific breeding methods for large-scale breeding. Each farm has a large number of heads, between 30,000 and 100,000 heads. As you can see from the photographs, the breeding density is very high, and the larvae of green iguanas are everywhere.