Green Iguana

🌍 Overview

Green iguanas are large arboreal herbivores from Central and South America, and the gap between what they are sold as and what they become is the widest of any pet reptile. A hatchling is six inches and costs very little. An adult reaches six feet or more, weighs up to twenty pounds, needs a custom enclosure the size of a wardrobe, and lives twenty years in captivity. They are strict herbivores whose gut relies on fermenting leafy greens, so the classic mistakes are protein and insufficient calcium, both of which produce metabolic bone disease. Males in breeding condition can become genuinely aggressive. Escaped and released animals have established breeding populations in Florida, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

📋 Quick Facts

📜 History

The green iguana was placed on CITES Appendix II on February 4, 1977, which means the decades that followed are documented in permit records. Commercial farms in Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia and Panama scaled up through the 1980s and 1990s to supply the American market, and imports peaked at more than 800,000 animals in 1995 and roughly a million the year after. Iguana imports accounted for roughly a third of all reptiles brought into the United States in 1997. Between 1996 and 2012 the species made up close to half of the country's entire live reptile trade, making it the most heavily traded reptile in the world.

🧠 Test Yourself