The meaning of the word iguana seems to be lost in the tropical shrubbery of Central America. The Spanish may have borrowed it from an Indian name for a certain tree, Large., lolling lizards may have used this tree as a sun deck In any case, the word iguana finally came to mean a lizard. The most famous iguana looks as fearsome as a dragon, But he is no more dangerous then any number of his small cousins living in most of North America.
He is classified in the suborder Sauria, which means that his family tree includes the dinosaurs, those giant saurians who dominated the world for more than 100 million years, The iguana of the tropics is still king of the lizard family Iguanidae and his small cousins include most of the lizards of the New World,
The little fence lizard, with bright blue patches on his throat and tummy is, strictly speaking, an iguana.. This fellow is often reported to be poisonous, but this is not so. Our only poisonous lizard is the gaudy Gila monster, who is not an iguana. The chuckwalla, a foot long, and the busy little pine lizard. are also members of the family Iguanidae, The pretty little anoli and the so called horned toad are also iguana lizards.
The family name includes many lizards which we usually do not think of as iguanas, As a rule, we use this name for certain giants of the New World tropics, In parts of Central America, a six foot long iguana is quite a common sight. He loves to loll on a high branch overhanging a stream. When startled, he plops down into the water, though he also can scurry away fast through the grass.
This big fellow is far from handsome. Down his spine he wears a fearsome row of horny scales.
His scaly skin hangs over his cheeks in loose flaps and there is a waxy, white wart on each side of his throat. His back claws, which look so sharp and threatening, are merely for climbing trees. His sharp teeth are used for nothing more dangerous than snipping the tender buds, the fruit and flowers on which he feeds.
His scaly body is a duller green, often with darker stripes along the sides. Mrs, Iguana may lay 50 eggs in the soft earth. They hatch soon after the rainy seasons and for a while the world seems to be full of busy little green dragons,
There are other lizards called iguanas in the Pacific Islands and on Madagascar. There are two types on the Galapagos islands near the equator off the west coast of Central America. One of them is the marine iguana, the only seagoing lizard in the world. He looks like a chunky dragon, about a yard long, but he would not harm a shrimp. Ibis time is spent sun bathing on the rocks off shore and plunging into the water for algae and other seaweeds, This fearful looking dragon, like his relatives, is also a vegetarian.