Tips for Iguana Safety

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village, I'm Nicole, and I'm here to tell you about iguanas. Now sometimes iguanas can get hurt in their own environment, and this is something you need to be very careful about. When putting together your terrarium for your iguana, make sure there are no loose, sharp wires anywhere. These will eventually scratch the iguana, even cut it, requiring stitches. Also, you want to make sure you provide your heat by lights, not by under tank pads, and not by heat rocks. They don't sense heat on their bellies. So a iguana that is provided a heat rock will actually lay on it, trying to warm up, and then actually burn itself. Because it doesn't feel that it's very hot underneath there. When using lighting for heat for your iguana, you want to make sure that your lights are either enclosed by a dome that covers the bulb, to where your iguana cannot get through to reach the actual heat source. Or, like I have done, you can provide your lighting from the outside of the cage. This provides a way for the iguana to warm itself, to aid in digestion, and it also prevents him from being able to reach the light and burn himself. Now when picking your terrarium, or building your terrarium, you want to make sure the outside is covered with a screen that has small enough holes, where your iguana cannot fit through it, or even close. Now this is chicken wire, and I would actually prefer that this be smaller. My iguana is large enough to prevent him from going through it. Now a lot of times, if the holes are a little too big, the iguana will try to escape through the holes and end up hurting itself, because they can get stuck very easily. An iguana that is bound and determined to get out of its cage will try until it hurts itself. "