Iguana Social Needs

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Tim Cole. I'm with the Austin Reptile Service, and I've been keeping reptiles and amphibians for over forty years, and I'm here to talk to you about iguana socialization. Now iguanas can be territorial, especially males. And generally speaking, if you've got adult iguanas, you can keep usually limited to one male for quite a few females. Unless it's a very large cage, it's hard to get more than one male into a cage if they're adults. Males have higher crests on their backs, they have larger dew-laps, and they display a lot more than the female iguana. And generally, you can tell the sex of a male if you put a unknown sex into a cage with a known male, you can see how he reacts. You'll know if you've got a male or female that's being introduced. If it's a smaller male, there's a good possibility that larger male will run over and kill that smaller male. But, if you're doing rescues, and you've got a large group of iguanas, you'll learn pretty quickly who's the dominate male, who isn't, who needs to be separated, who gets along."