WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY: Psychedelic Summer Lizard
Iguana tell you about a Twentynine Palms Icon; originally published June 26, 2024
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Although it has been stupid hot for a couple of weeks now, a few flowers still bloom. Creosote’s tiny puffballs hang from branches, lavender blossoms cling to desert willows, and palo verde trees still sport a few flowers.
Flower-loving, heat-seeking lizards like desert iguanas are also still around, climbing creosote bushes to nibble flowers, basking on hot rocks, and flicking down burrows to hide from passing humans. Desert iguanas like it when it’s 110 degrees, hanging out on the front porch and gobbling crickets I find in the house and toss to them. (They’re like a college friend I had: vegetarian except for cheeseburgers.)
Desert iguanas can’t seem to get hot enough and can often be seen basking on asphalt roads. Driving out of the park one evening we saw a desert iguana whisking away, but not fast enough. I swerved to miss it, coming a little close to an oncoming car. While my passenger covered his eyes in terror, I shouted, “lizard lives matter!” I’m not sure he’s forgiven me.
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Desert iguanas possibly have the fanciest pattern of any lizard in the Mojave, which Chuck Caplinger captured in his mural on the Smoketree building on Highway 62 in Twentynine Palms. The dots and dashes seem to reverse themselves: cream spots on a brown or gray background merging into chocolate dots on vanilla. It’s possible to confuse a young desert iguana with another heat-loving lizard: the zebra tail.
Desert iguanas ooze secretions from pores on the underside of their thighs that fluoresce, which the lizards can see and smell, making the desert where they live one vast psychedelic black-light painting. The iguanas leave fluorescent trails that mark territory or let other iguanas know they are around.1
Many flowers have fluorescent markings visible in the ultraviolet spectrum that hummingbirds and pollinating insects can see, and it is believed that desert iguanas see these markings too and look for these cues to find flowers to eat.
I went out with a UV flashlight to look for these desert iguana tracks around a creosote where I know our porch iguana hangs out, but I didn’t see them. I did see a scorpion, though. I will keep trying to get a photo of psychedelic fluorescent lizard trails, and if I do, I’ll post them here.
1 If you are as fascinated by this as I am, here’s a 1989 New Scientist article all about the desert iguana’s fluorescent pheromones.
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Thanks for republishing as I missed this on the first go ‘round. Now I’m obsessively looking up desert lizards and sauromachy (pollinator syndrome whereby reptiles transfer pollen) to see if these mini beasts have a connection to plant reproduction. See what you made me do by writing such an interesting article?!?
Mark Heuston, Wonder Valley
Thank you for the interesting and enjoyable article. I love Desert Iguanas! I have gotten endless entertainment watching them interact around my studio yard.
One will wander into another's territory. A confrontation ensues, with both lizards bluffing and doing pushups. It ends with one chasing the other off. Almost invariably, the chasee winds up in someone else's territory, and the ritualized bluffing and pushups begin again. I have watched this process daisy chain around the studio yard!
I saw two of them end a territorial dispute in mutual combat once. They closed quarters, and bit the hell out if each other for several seconds. I didn't observe any wounds or injuries when they parted. The event ended in the usual way, with the presumed victor chasing his opponent off.
They do love heat. When casting metal, I have occaisionally had one get close to the furnace to bask in the radiant heat. It worries me; I have to be extra careful transferring the crucible to avoid spilling hot metal on my little guest. 😬
I too have observed Desert Iguana out at Amboy crater, but the one I saw had done a subperb job of matching his body color to the dark volcanic rock. I had never seen one so dark, and had to look closely to confirm it really was a desert iguana.