Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is my new baby iguana Jaden. It's not old enough to tell it's gender by all the obvious ways so I was wondering if anyone knew enough about them to tell from the shape of it's head or dewlap, i've heard that you can tell from head shape and size and a notch on it's dewlap but the links to the pictures of that don't exist on the internet... as far as i can find with google. it's about 5 months old now, maybe more. My fiance bought it for me as a birthday present from petco and they don't keep track of the ages well enough to tell us for certain. Anyway we're guessing female just because of how mild tempered it is. it can get a little fiesty trying to get away when you pick it up but as soon as it's up it'll cuddle or sit on my shoulder or ride around the town inside my jacket. but it's to young to check the pores an such. thanks for any help.
Maze

Actually, at that young age you may have an easier time looking at its vent. If there are pores and a bulge... it means the 'equipment' is there: boy.

But again, too early to tell.

-IJ

I know that. We have a baby bearded dragon that i got for my fiances' birthday and it's obviously a girl from it's lack of a buldge but Jadens' tail is to thick an healthy to tell if there a buldge or not an its' pores are still looking like a female/every baby, but I was reading somewhere about a notch in the dewlap that most males have that females don't that is appearent in juveniles also. and I read somewhere else that a study was done with hundreds of babies calculating head size and shape and geometry type things like the location of the eye's and that they could tell from that(i think it was a really old book or something) but it failed to say what those geometries were. maybe if everyone would post baby picture side view/front view head shots of known male/female iguanas we could redo that test here on a smaller scale and see if we can find definate differences in head shapes and dewlaps.
Maze

This is gonna sound like one of FR's posts in the monitor forum, but here I go.

I can see you have purple sand, or something that looks like it, as your substrate. Big no no. Iguanas are tropical animals and live in rainforests. There is no sand in the Neotropical rainforest. Trust me, I've been there and seen wild igs. You need something like cypress mulch in there. (Not bark chips, they suck for ALL herps)

I REALLY REALLY hope you realize what youre getting into. From now on, you or your wife should NOT give animals as presents. The animals are almost always not researched and impulse baught. This situation is very common and I REALLY wish no one sold iguanas. In a perfect world, people would need a license for big/dangerous herps no matter where they lived, pet stores would not sell animals, only supplies, no animals would EVER be wild caught for the pet trade, and breeders and shows would be the only way to attain animals. But thats gonna be awhile. People buy the cute baby ig and put in the absolute worst care and never do ANY research. They end up dumping or releasing their ig when it turns into the 7 foot nightmare of a lizard and its a lose-lose situation. Iguanas are VERY expensive to keep. The massive enclosure they require and the many basking lamps, cost of food, electricity bills, and all that will drain your wallet. So be prepared.

About the gender, you were partially correct about the mild temper indicating a female. This only applies when they are mature however. You WANT your ig to be a little feisty when young. This shows it is healthy. The females, when mature, are much more laid back (and smaller and easier to keep). You can only tell which gender it is once it gets to subadult. The females have a smaller head, a smaller dewlap (I dont know about the dewlap notch thing, never heard of it.) and will be on the calm side. Males get massive pores when adult and they secrete a waxy substance to mark their territory. Female pores remain small, but now is to early to tell. Males will have a much bigger head and dewlap. Males, when mature, are a NIGHTMARE for the begginer keeper. They get HUGE and are very violent during the breeding season. They will turn bright orange and become VERY aggressive. I have seen male igs that have removed fingers. Be VERY careful. But they act as calm as females during the rest of the year. If you want to see a big dominant male in breeding colors, look for one of sideman17's posts. He has a massive, beatiful male named Dexter. Dexter the picture of iguana health. ALL male igs should look like him.

Anyway, he/she looks reasonably healthy but should be slighty fatter and should be bigger for a 5 month old. Petco has a way of lying, cheating, and starving their animals, so this is not your fault that it is smaller than it should be. Your ig is Wild Caught (WC) and should be taken to a REPTILE, not dog, vet for a check up. Any WC animal should be taken to a vet straight away.
And you said you carry it around town inside your jacket! Dont do that! There are soooo many things that could go wrong there. It could escape, suffocate in your jacket, get stolen, have a panic attack, etc. The iguana only wants to be left alone in its cage. Handling is ok as long as its indoors and not for too long. If you absolutley must take him outdoors, buy a harness that wont damage his spines (some of them can hurt the ig, be careful) and wait till hes bigger, about 4 feet, to take itout. It will be more used to and will be easier to keep track of when bigger.

Here is a wonderful link for igs. Mellisa Kaplan has the most ig info on the net. ANd Ialso reccomend the book Green Iguana- The Ultimate Owner's Manual by James Hatfeild. Its about 20 bucks and is the absolute BEST source of ig info ANYWHERE. I'm terribly sorry if I offended you, but I'm telling like it is and I really want best for your little ig. Next time, stick with something a lot easier and research your butt of
BEFORE you get it. If you have any questions, feel free to ask here! Trust me, that book is a MUST HAVE for any ig keeper and you NEED to bookmark that website. Good luck with it!

Link

The link for anapsid.org is under the gecko picture. Sorry, I didnt mean to put that pic in the way but scroll down under it and it will say Link.

Sorry for triple posting! D: But here is a link to sideman7's pics of Dexter. He is the biggest, healthiest and most colorful ig Iv'e ever seen. Anyway, thats what the males will look like in the breeding season. Dexter is also the subspecies of ig with the snout spines. He is NOT a rhinoceros iguana (Cylura cornuta) but is a SUBspecies of the normal green iguana like you have.

Oops! Forgot the link!
Link

There is actually no way to tell until at about 15-18 months of age the sex of an iguana. And unfortunately, temperment can be either calm or aggressive in both sexes, and can change drastically in between babyhood and adulthood. I do notice that you have some kind of sand stuff in there, and someone else recomended a bark. Unfortunately tons of iguanas die of impaction every year as they tounge flick their surroundings and can accidentally ingest substrates of any kind. Most veteran ig keepers use either a reptile carpet-but be careful toenails cant catch and snag and break a toe, or vinyl linoleum-easy to wipe and disenfect, or most commonly, plain newspaper, cheap and easiest to clean, just fold it up and toss. There is some debate whether or not the ink is harmful, however there is no evidence of the ink causing any harm, some however choose to get plain, uninked newpaper (leftover rolls from the print shop that are too short to be printed on). I too used chips when my ig was a baby until I learned better, newspaper is now my choice as well. Best wishes to you and your new friend. A good site with tons of info on care housing, diet, humidity, etc is www.greenigsociety.org