Hi Steemit family!

Kramer's parrot

This week I bring you a lot of reptiles to enjoy, sometimes I have written about some reptiles but I have not dedicated a week, so this week you can meet some of the most amazing reptiles, these animals seem to have been captured in time, many of them represent the last history and vestiges of the extinct dinosaurs, showing that despite the problems that led to the extinction of these giants of the past in one way or another managed to mutate and evolve in much smaller ways. Today it is the turn of the Marine Iguana. Join me to learn more about this fabulous species.

source

The marine iguana is closely related to the land iguana, but with the only difference that this species of iguana lives in a marine environment. It is endemic to the Galapagos Islands where an active community of these specimens lives, when they are in the early stages of their lives they are usually in the comfort and protection provided by coastal rocks, and when they are adults they can swim up to 2 kilometers out to a depth of 20 meters.

source

Perhaps the most characteristic feature of this species of iguana is its ability to conserve the heat of its blood, as well as manipulate their heart values to decrease or increase depending on the temperature this achieves thanks to different postures. Their size is variable depending on the island that inhabits, the smallest marine iguanas are in the island Genovesa and the biggest in the island of Santa Cruz. While the most colorful are found on the Spanish island, they are excellent swimmers thanks to having flattened tails that move under the water by lateral undulation effect.

source

The color of this species is black with gray, excellent color that helps to camouflage itself among the stones, in addition to being heated very fast, being relative the color depending on the time and the temperature, for example some iguanas can have red, black and green mandas, being the red pigment the color of an alga that is produced in the summer months or when it is extreme heat, as well as there are male marine iguanas that can change its color depending on the degree of temperature in which they are.

source

Their snout is shorter than the land iguanas, short and blunt snout, and their tail is softer, have external eardrums and are provided with movable eyelids, with their respective 5 fingers with sharp claws, has vision problems, but this is not a problem since they have a scaly part on the skin near their head that indicates if there is darkness or lighting.

source

As for their diet is based solely and exclusively on vegetables, they feed thanks to some species of green and red algae that live on the rocks or in some marine areas, only feed once a day, but if the iguana is larger can go up to 4 days without feeding, feed especially at low tide and algae are easier to eat.

source

Only the adult and robust males are those that have the capacity to dive more than 20 meters deep and stay a half hour before returning to the surface to warm up again.

source

As for their reproduction is vital the hottest months to be able to procreate and incubate eggs without problems, between December and May are the warm months is when they begin to mate and in the months of January and April is when the female deposits up to a maximum of 6 eggs in holes that digs about 30 and 80 centimeters deep, are very good mothers stay days taking care of new members, can spend up to a maximum of 100 days until the process ends and hatches the new iguanas.