Hello everyone,
Today's animal of the week's post is about marine iguanas.
Today's animal of the week's post is about marine iguanas.
Habitat
Marine iguanas live on the Galapagos islands, which are situated on the
equator, just off the east of South America. They don't live any where else in
the world. Almost every Galapagos island has a different species of iguana.
Diet
Marine iguanas eat algae. They have to dive into the sea to do this. They have
become excellent swimmers. They can dive down to depths of 20 metres. Marine
iguanas can hold their breath for a very long time, more than 15 minutes.
Marine iguanas have evolved to match their surroundings. Being cold-blooded
means that they get very cold when they go swimming for algae. They have black
scales, so that they can absorb as much warmth from the sun as possible.
Threats
Unfortunately marine iguanas have quite a few threats.
1. El Niño
El Niño is a kind of storm. It happens every four to seven years. El Niño
destroys the green algae, so the marine iguanas try to eat brown algae, which
they can't digest. Hundreds of marine iguanas die from starvation.
2. Birds of prey
Birds of prey pick off the young and the weak marine iguanas. However, this
doesn't effect the population much.
3. Humans
As with most animals, we are the one of the biggest threats to the marine
iguana population. Humans now visit the Galapagos Islands just for a holiday.
Most people who go there don't realise that they are destroying an amazing
ecosystem just by being there. At least, I hope they don't. If they did know
and continued to go there, they would be knowingly destroying the environment.
Cats, dogs, rats and pigs all have two things in common; 1, they were all
introduced to the Galapagos islands by humans and 2, they all prey on marine
iguanas.
Marine iguanas are also effected by rising sea levels and air temperature.
These affect their breading sites and habits, and make it harder to control
their body temperature. And rising sea levels and air temperature are both
caused by climate change and climate change is caused by humans.
If you want to learn more about these amazing creatures, I would suggest
watching 'Galapagos with David Attenborough'.
Thank you! I hope you enjoyed reading this.
Sources:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/facts/marine-iguana
https://oceana.org/marine-life/marine-iguana/
Image: Marine iguana, owned by Peter Wilton (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/facts/marine-iguana
https://oceana.org/marine-life/marine-iguana/
Image: Marine iguana, owned by Peter Wilton (on flickr.com), is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
It’s great that you are featuring such fantastic creatures- really excellent.
ReplyDeleteI love the marine iguanas and I know a young man whose name begins with S who loves these as we do.
It’s so important you are highlighting these and other amazing creatures and that we must all reduce our carbon footprint radically to preserve these from just being museum pieces.
RB