The Appearance of a Healthy Iguana

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village, I'm Nichole, here to tell you about Iguanas. The appearance of a male Iguana, such as this one, it varies quite a bit actually. On first glance you might think this one is an adult female, because of the lack of height in the spines right here, the males will get a larger crest right here. As you can see, he is a little frightened right now so he is not letting go of this towel, so I'm just going to let him hang on to that. This is called a dorsal crest, and as he gets older it's going to get a lot bigger, a lot more pronounced and these spikes are going to get a lot longer. In some males, they grow real low all along the back here. But on a lot of males, such as this one, he doesn't get that height in these spines back here. Another characteristic of males is their size in general. This one on first glance could also be a female, because of the size, this is probably about the average size of a three year old female Iguana. But he is actually two and a half years old, by the time he reaches three years old, he should be two and a half feet in length. He is feeling very frightened, very threatened, and he is trying to get away from me. Now he has very sharp claws, he does scratch quite a bit, that is one of the things you definitely want to watch out for with your Iguana. But that is something you can help reduce the amount of damage done by keeping their nails trimmed."