I’ve been missing my pets lately, including my iguana whom I had for 17 years. What were his kinfolk doing all the way out there in Fiji?
Beautiful creature, isn’t it? I wonder what they look like when they get much older. Our American iguanas develop strong jaws, and their colors fade.
Winding up in Fiji, though–that’s a genuine mystery.
You can’t get much farther away from the Caribbean than Fiji Island in the South Pacific. Like, they’re only separated by the widest ocean in the world.
So how does Fiji wind up with two iguana species?
These lizards have gotten kind of rare, so the Fiji government protects them.
You’d think there’d be some iguanas living on islands between Central America and Fiji, but no one’s ever seen any.
Just another mystery of Creation.
Hi, Mr. Nature here, with a mysterious animal–the two iguana species of the Fiji Islands. The one in the picture is a male banded iguana.
What’s so mysterious about them? Well, members of the iguana family are almost exclusively New World lizards–so what are they doing in Fiji, thousands of miles away from the iguana homeland? On islands, no less, with the Pacific Ocean in the way? They’re really quite similar to American iguanas in most respects. But it would be hard for them to wind up much farther away from where you’d think they belong.
How did they get there? It’s not like they could build miniature Kon-Tiki rafts. Anyway, no one knows. They’re just there.
The Fiji iguanas are rare and endangered, as island species often are. The government of Fiji endeavors to protect them, but that doesn’t stop some people from acquiring them illegally. So don’t buy one! They’re all needed to keep on mating in the wild.
It’s a beautiful creature, though–the Bible says the Lord delights in His creation, and we believe it.