Black Ctenosaur

 One of my the first encounters with a new species (new for me) on this trip was the black iguana, also known as the black cternosaur.

This little big guy had a permanent area around the resort, scoped out for himself. Every time I walked that particular path, he would be roaming around, slowly but surely. 

Me being me, took a photo every time I saw him.

This is not the first time I've seen a large, wild iguana. Fort Lauderdale, Florida has a ton of them and they are invading the city. But this particular iguana is not the same as the ones in Florida.

The Black Iguanas are resident of Central America and has the widest range of all Ctenosaura species from Greece to Mexico and to the north of Nicaragua and west side of Panama on particularly Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Black Iguana is commonly available throughout Costa Rica

The adult males are capable reach to a length up to 1.5 meters (4 ft 11 inches) and females are 1 meter (3.3 inches) slightly shorter to males.It can weight close to 9-11 pounds (5 kilograms), like green Iguana.

 

 Black Iguanas are herbivorous, that includes leaves, flowers, fruits and stems. However, they can eat smaller eggs, animals, arthropods, fish and birds. They depend mainly on herbivorous as they become older. As they are the cousin of Green Iguana. It is believed that their life span is around 20 years in wild. However, the exact details are not known.

Black iguanas spend more time on the ground than in trees, though they are excellent climbers when the need arises. Young black iguanas also stay up off the ground more, probably to avoid being eaten by larger specimens. Black Iguanas could be found throughout the Costa Rica and the country’s national parks.

These oviparous Black Iguana lay clutches of 20-30 eggs in filthy soil. The young’s are 6-7 inches at the time of hatching. Mating usually occurs during the spring time. Males demonstrate their dominance and interest by head nodding; ultimately the male will pursue the female until he catch her and suppress her. Within 8 – 10 weeks, the female will dig a nest and lay clutches of up to 30 eggs. These eggs hatch in the period of 90 days and the hatchlings dig their way out of the sand. These are normally green with brown marks, though all brown hatchlings are recorded as well.

 Quickest among all lizards in the planet, is the Ctenosaura similisor commonly known as Black Iguana.  “Ctenosaura” is a combination of two Greek words: cteno meaning “comb”, noticeably in the Black Iguana’s spiny back and tail, and saura which means lizard. On the other hand similisis the Latin word for “similar to”.

With the speed of 21.7 mph (34.9 km/h), Black Iguanas are good it escaping any threat. They bite and use their tail as weapon if they have nowhere else to run. Stony environment is what they consider as their home. Preferably these places have little gaps in them so that they can hide and rocks to “sunbathe” on as we humans do. They are outstanding in climbing trees too. Black Iguanas fancies flowers, leaves, stems and fruits, but there are cases that they eat little creatures, eggs and arthropods. It was noted that these reptiles are herbivores first and carnivores/insectivores after.

You can watch the speed of this little big guy as I follow him around in the following short video.