Close up portrait of a Marine Iguana, Amblyrhynchus cristatus, against the sea. Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.
Whenever I go in a trip there are some ‘wishlist’ species that I really hope to see, and am nervous in case I won’t see them. Of course, you always have to miss ‘something’ so that you have a reason to go back! But in my case, one of the species I most wanted to see was Marine Iguana. I needn’t have worried about not seeing them. They are present and numerous, in various subspecies, over all the visitable islands. Sometimes you have to step over them carefully as you land on islands. They are totally unafraid of humans and literally just ‘stay put’ as a group of people carefully navigates their way over and above them.
Marine Iguanas are found only in the Galapagos Islands. They are the only lizards in the world which spend time swimming and feeding in the ocean – they can dive to 20m. It’s fun to snorkel above them while they are scraping algae off rocks – this is why they have a very blunt nose, particularly compared to other lizards. When they swim they ripple/wiggle their body from side to side, much like a snake moves on land. Large males can grow to 1.6m in length, but females are muich smaller, c0.6m.
Scientists figure that land-dwelling iguanas from South America must have drifted out to sea millions of years ago on logs or other debris, eventually landing on the Galápagos. From that species emerged marine iguanas, which spread to nearly all the islands of the archipelago. Each island hosts marine iguanas of unique size, shape and color.
National Geographic
They have a special nasal gland which helps them to extract salt which they ingest while diving. Once on land, they sneeze out this salt from their noses. Normally they project the salt quite some distance forward, but the wind can blow the salt back over them, so many Marine Iguanas have encrusted salt ‘caps’ on the top of their heads, like the iguana in this image.
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