13.09.2020 Animal of the week: Marine Iguanas

Hello everyone,

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.