During a morning beach walk here in Banderas Bay, Mexico, I spotted the largest iguana I have ever seen.
"That guy’s practically a Komodo dragon," my boat neighbor Rob joked. The big male and several other iguanas, Rob explained, live in a stand of trees in the marina.
I had a grove of new friends.
These big lizards, called green iguanas, are not marine iguanas, but they are the evolutionary ancestors of the famous Galapagos species. The greens didn’t have far to go.
Researchers believe that millions of years ago land-dwelling green iguanas from South or Central America drifted to sea on log rafts and ended up in the Galapagos. There, the Thor Heyerdahls of lizards evolved into true marine animals, living exclusively on submerged seaweed.
Charles Darwin called marine iguanas "hideous," but today people travel long distances at great expense to admire the little charmers. Because they sneeze salt while warming themselves on the black lava rocks, marine iguanas’ heads and faces often look white. And while basking, the lizards sometimes get the spa treatment. The Sally lightfoot rock crabs I wrote about last week walk all over the willing iguanas, picking off parasites.
This is a memorable sight — as is, while diving, having a 5-foot-long lizard swim past you, its long tail swishing back and forth crocodile style. It’s like a real life visit to "Sherman’s Lagoon."
The Galapagos iguanas are the only seagoing lizards in the world, but their cousins, the green iguanas, are avid swimmers. They often live in trees that hang over rivers, mangrove swamps or estuaries. If threatened, the iguanas leap from a branch, land with a splash and swim to safety.
That must be some belly flop. Mature males grow to 7 feet long, about half of that tail, which the lizard can detach if necessary to escape. Like our geckos, iguana tails grow back good as new.
Females are smaller, and, like juveniles, brighter green.
Like their Galapagos cousins, green iguanas get rid of excess body salt through their nostrils and can also stay underwater for 30 minutes.
Both are vegetarians. Unlike carnivorous lizards that spend their days hunting, these fruit and vegetable eaters spend much of their time resting.
In some areas of Central and South America, people eat green iguanas, calling them "chicken of the trees." But here in my marina at La Cruz de Huanacaxtale, people feed them.
"They like mangoes," a marina worker told me, tossing a piece of fruit to the iguana that had descended to the ground for a treat.
My Komodo dragon wannabe likes bananas, too.
My Galapagos trip was a long time ago, but happily I can still get my lizard thrills right here on the Mexican Riviera. Not marine iguanas, but marina iguanas.
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Reach Susan Scott at www.susanscott.net.
