Blue Iguana - Diet and Longevity

Diet and Longevity

Like all Cyclura species, the Blue Iguana is primarily herbivorous, consuming leaves, flowers, and fruits from over 45 species of plant. This diet is very rarely supplemented with insect larvae, crabs, slugs, dead birds, and fungi. The iguanas are presented with a special problem for osmoregulation: plant matter contains more potassium and as it has less nutritional content per gram, more must be eaten to meet the lizard's metabolic needs. As they are not capable of creating urine more concentrated than their bodily fluids, they excrete nitrogenous wastes as uric acid salts through a salt gland in the same manner as birds. As a result, they have developed this lateral nasal gland to supplement renal salt secretion by expelling excess potassium and sodium chloride.

Longevity in the wild is unknown but is presumed to be many decades. A Blue Iguana named "Godzilla" captured on Grand Cayman in 1950 by naturalist Ira Thompson was imported to the United States in 1985 by Ramon Noegel and sold to reptile importer and breeder, Tom Crutchfield in 1990. Crutchfield donated Godzilla to the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas in 1997 and the lizard remained there until its death in 2004. Thompson estimated Godzilla to be 15 years of age at the time of his capture. At an estimated 69 years of age (54 of which were spent in captivity), Godzilla may be the world's longest-living lizard for which there is reliable record. A closely related Lesser Caymans Iguana (C. nubila caymanensis) has been documented as living 33 years in captivity.