Published: January 11, 2018
Green iguanas and feral goats together threaten the future of humanity on remote Pacific islands, say two recent scientific studies in Pacific Science magazine.
The iguanas and goats were introduced as pets by human beings, and later ran wild and reproduced, eating up things that other species liked to eat.
Feral goats may look playful, but they can be dangerous to the environment.
Randolph Thaman, a professor at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, says: “Both goats and green iguanas clearly constitute serious threats to small islands and their fragile native and cultural biodiversity and ecosystems, with goats having historically proven to be particularly disastrous”.
He suggests that management efforts for both species should focus on preventing them from spreading, especially to smaller uninhabited islands with indigenous local iguana populations and threatened island ecosystems that have highly endemic plants and animal communities.
“The message from these two well-researched papers is that, for small islands — especially those with important populations of native or endemic animals and productive polycultural agricultural systems that are a foundation for food and productive security — the prevention or eradication of invasive alien species and diseases, remains the most positive option,” Thaman says.
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Iguanas
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goats,
humanity,
Pacific Ocean
Published: January 10, 2018
You won’t believe what happened next!
It seemed a normal sunny day in West Kendall, FL, until the toilet bowl boiled over. Whole thing here.
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Iguanas
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Florida,
toilets
Published: January 9, 2018
This is old—Pleistocene in fact, by cryptocurrency standards—but it’s called Iguana and may be useful to someone.
Originally printed on a junk blog called Medium. Here it is.
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Iguanas
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Bitcoin,
cryptocurrency
Published: January 7, 2018
It’s a great enigma to me how Getty Images was formed out of the old Ian Hulton/Radio Times picture archive, and how they managed to commandeer every worthwhile news and PR photo of the 20th century.
Anyway, Elizabeth Taylor visited Richard Burton in Mexico while they were making The Night of the Iguana around 1964. Their relationship had begun during Cleopatra, as you may remember, and it was still adulterous, as their divorces hadn’t been finalized. Someone must have realized there was no actual publicity shot of Burton with an iguana, hence the above photo. And this similar one (no Getty watermark!).
Here’s also one with director John Huston. You can imagine the dialogue:
“How much are you worth, Mr. Huston? Five million iguanas? Ten million?”
“Oh, my, yes.”
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Iguanas
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Elizabeth Taylor,
John Huston,
Richard Burton,
The Night of the Iguana
Published: January 7, 2018
It’s always a joy to peruse “myths and misconceptions” copy about the keeping of exotic animals. When I was a little girl (this admittedly was in another century) it was commonly believed that cavies, or guinea pigs, would have their eyes fall out if you held them upside down.
“Oh yes,” my dentist, Dr. Huff, assured me, “they fall out and you can never get them back in again!”
This of course was just before I got my first guinea pig.
The Green Iguana Society has a page that is particularly informative. Much of the advice is commonplace (don’t feed them meat, don’t keep them in 10-gallon aquaria), but the last two paragraphs are particularly useful and yummy:
Iguanas are stupid?! Many people think that iguanas are relatively stupid animals. In fact, they are very intelligent, considering the size of their brains. Iguanas can be toilet trained, learn tricks, and even find their way home when lost. These are only a few of the things that iguanas are capable of learning, and they reinforce the fact that they are not stupid animals.
Iguanas have no personality?! Every iguana is different and every one of them is different in its own unique way. Some are very personable, and most act differently when around their primary owner. Basically, once someone owns an iguana, it will be completely clear that iguanas are full of personality.
Whole thing here.
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Iguanas
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Green Iguana Society,
guinea pigs,
pets
Published: January 7, 2018
An exciting, fun-filled and eco-healthful journey through some strange (and not-so-strange) eating! Andrew Zimmern, hold onto your wig.
Jackson Landers grew up in a vegetarian household. Now he hunts and butchers much of his own meat. In the past five years, he’s focused on hunting and eating invasive species.
In his book, Eating Aliens: One Man’s Adventures Eating and Hunting Invasive Species, the 35-year-old Landers chronicles his travels around the country as he learns to hunt, butcher and eat various invasive species.
In Florida, he encounters (and eats) black spiny-tailed iguanas, wild tilapia and plecostomus, a sucker fish commonly seen in freshwater aquariums.
Whole thing here. From WLRN, December 28, 2017, but originally written in 2013.
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Iguanas
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cooking
