Spending Christmas week in the Galapagos is a very different but delightful experience. Here you don't have any Christmas shopping, and there are no carols or Santa Claus. Instead we find sea lions at play, making their own special sounds, many birds in flight and colorful fish while we snorkel. The closest we get to Christmas in the Galapagos is when we see the male marine iguanas, which are now changing to their breeding season colors, and actually are becoming red and green!
On the first afternoon of our cruise, we had great sightings of the land iguanas (which by the way, never become green and red). During their breeding season these animals become a beautiful dark yellow. Land iguanas are not as common in Galapagos as the marine iguanas are; they are only found on six islands. The wild population is so small that the Charles Darwin Research Station is breeding them in captivity. You can imagine how fortunate we were this afternoon to see five of them!
The land iguanas, along with the giant tortoises, play an important ecological role that is often occupied by terrestrial mammals in other parts of the world; they are the main herbivores in the islands. In the Galapagos there are twenty-two species of reptiles and two of these are land iguanas. Both species of land iguanas belong to the endemic genus Conolophus, named for their cone like mouth. Conolophus subcristatus is pictured here. The second species, Conolophus palidus, has a distribution limited to the island of Santa Fe.
Reptiles have arrived and established on the Galapagos more successfully than any other group of animals because they readily adapt to very dry environments. Their horny skin, almost always divided into scales, protects them from desiccation, and allows them to survive long periods without water. They are lung-breathing vertebrates and their outer skin is mostly devoid of glands, except for a few which have very special functions. They do not have either feathers or hair. Their body temperature fluctuates with the ambient temperature hence they are "poikilothermic". Poikilos means "varied" in Greek.
The land iguanas in the Galapagos have adapted to feed on cactuses. They possess strong mouths and they chew easily through the spiny pads of the prickly pear cactuses found here. Sometimes they don't ever bother to remove the spines from the pads! Male land iguanas are bigger than females. During this time of the year the males are becoming very bright to attract the females. Courtship display is a combination of head bobbing and circling of the females.
Today's picture gives you a rough idea of how attractive these animals can be. Of course, not only human beings find them attractive. Female land iguanas find them irresistible! This male is trying to attract a mate. I think he will accomplish his goal, don't you?
