Iguanas
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50 free Iguanas trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Iguanas look like small dragons, but most of them are gentle plant-eaters with some of the strangest habits in the reptile world. One species forages beneath the waves, others have crossed whole oceans on driftwood, and a few have come back from the edge of extinction. This quiz turns the best fun facts about iguanas into multiple-choice questions. It covers green iguanas, marine iguanas, rock iguanas and their desert cousins: what they eat, how they signal, where they live and how they stay safe from predators. A handful of questions follow iguanas into films, cartoons, music and the theatre. The opening questions are easy enough for kids and curious beginners, while later ones will test reptile keepers and wildlife fans. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more iguana facts than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which US state do cold snaps stun wild green iguanas so badly that they tumble from their perches?
Florida
Florida's feral iguanas slip into a torpor on unseasonably cold nights and lose their grip on the branches, as happened in January 2008, 2010 and 2018.
Q 02What do marine iguanas regularly sneeze out through their nostrils?
Salt
Salt is filtered from a marine iguana's blood by glands at the nostrils and expelled in a sneeze, which can turn its head white and crusty.
Q 03Green iguana meat is eaten in Central America under a nickname comparing it to which other meat?
Chicken
Chicken is the comparison: the nickname gallina de palo means 'chicken of the tree', and people in the region have eaten iguanas for about 7,000 years.
Q 04Which movie monster was reimagined in a 1998 Hollywood film as an iguana mutated by nuclear fallout?
Godzilla
Godzilla hatches in the 1998 film from an iguana nest exposed to fallout from a nuclear test in French Polynesia, then heads for New York City.
Q 05What can marine iguanas do to their own bodies to survive when El Niño wipes out their food?
Shrink in length
Shrink in length is what they do: some marine iguanas become up to 20% shorter during El Niño famines, then grow back once food returns.
Q 06What nickname is given to the pale light-sensing organ on the top of a green iguana's head?
Third eye
Third eye is the nickname of the parietal eye, which cannot form images but senses changes in light and dark and can detect movement overhead.
Q 07Which body part can a green iguana snap off to escape a predator's grip and later regrow?
Its tail
Its tail can break away when grabbed, letting the iguana escape and eventually regenerate a new one; it also works as a whip that delivers painful strikes.
Q 08Which punk rock singer got his stage name from the Iguanas, a high-school band he drummed for?
Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop, born James Osterberg, was nicknamed Iggy by a later band, the Prime Movers, because he had played in the Iguanas.
Q 09The dinosaur Iguanodon was named in 1825 because which of its fossil parts resembled an iguana's?
Teeth
Teeth gave Iguanodon its name, which means 'iguana-tooth'; geologist Gideon Mantell chose it for the second dinosaur ever formally named.
Q 10Marine iguanas are the only living lizards that forage in the ocean; what makes up almost all of their diet?
Algae
Algae growing on rocks make up nearly everything a marine iguana eats, and it can dive as deep as 30 metres and stay under for up to an hour to graze.
Q 11Which naturalist, meeting marine iguanas in 1835, described them as disgusting, clumsy lizards?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was revolted by the animals' looks yet observed them closely, and noted that somebody had nicknamed them imps of darkness.
Q 12Marine iguanas live only on the Galápagos Islands, which form a province of which South American country?
Ecuador
Ecuador governs the islands, which lie around 1,000 km west of its mainland and are protected as a national park and marine reserve.
Q 13Which BBC nature series made a famous 2016 chase out of marine iguanas fleeing racer snakes?
Planet Earth II
Q 21Which Caribbean island's iguana was thought extinct until a hog hunter's dog chased one into a log in 1990?
Jamaica
Jamaica's iguana had been believed extinct since 1948, and the animal the dog cornered in the Hellshire Hills was taken to the Hope Zoo.
Q 22The rhinoceros iguana, named for the horn-like bumps on its snout, is native to which Caribbean island?
Hispaniola
Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, is home to the rhinoceros iguana, whose bony snout bumps resemble a rhino's horn.
Q 23What do newly hatched marine iguanas eat to pick up the gut bacteria they need for digestion?
Adults' droppings
Planet Earth II showed the chase in its 'Islands' episode, narrated by David Attenborough, and reviewers singled it out as a highlight of the whole series.
Q 14Green iguanas have sharp colour vision and can see which kind of light that is invisible to humans?
Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet wavelengths are visible to green iguanas thanks to special double-cone cells, yet they have few rod cells and see poorly in dim light.
Q 15The black iguana of Mexico and Central America holds which record among all the world's lizards?
Fastest sprint
Fastest sprint goes to the black iguana: one was clocked at a burst speed of 34.6 km/h, the highest speed ever reported for a lizard.
Q 16What colour is the rare land iguana found only on Wolf Volcano in the Galápagos Islands?
Pink
Pink skin with dark stripes marks this iguana, which was first spotted in 1986 and only recognised as a separate species in 2009.
Q 17Green iguanas grow up to 1.7 metres long on a diet made up mostly of what?
Leaves and flowers
Leaves and flowers, along with fruit and growing shoots, feed green iguanas, which are primarily herbivores and browse on upwards of 100 kinds of plant.
Q 18Which flap of skin under the throat do green iguanas extend to court mates and regulate body temperature?
Dewlap
Dewlap is the name of the throat flap, which a cornered iguana also displays while it stiffens, puffs up its body and hisses at the aggressor.
Q 19Which South Pacific nation has native iguanas, an ocean away from their closest relatives in the Americas?
Fiji
Fiji has native banded iguanas, yet their closest living relatives are in the Americas, about 10,000 km away across the Pacific.
Q 20The endangered blue iguana, rescued by captive breeding, lives wild on only which Caribbean island?
Grand Cayman
Grand Cayman had fewer than 15 wild blue iguanas left by 2003, before hundreds of captive-bred animals were released into a preserve on the island.
Adults' droppings are a young marine iguana's main food for its first months, because they pass on the microbes it needs to digest the adult diet.
Q 24Which American playwright wrote The Night of the Iguana, a drama that premiered on Broadway in 1961?
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams set the play at a cheap hotel on the coast of Mexico, and John Huston turned it into an Oscar-winning film in 1964.
Q 25Isa the Iguana is one of the hero's animal friends in which Nickelodeon preschool cartoon?
Dora the Explorer
Dora the Explorer gave its young adventurer a monkey sidekick, Boots, and an iguana friend, Isa, who was voiced by three actresses over the show's run.
Q 26In which 2016 animated musical film is the theatre owner's elderly assistant, Miss Crawly, an iguana?
Sing
Sing gets its plot from a typo by Miss Crawly, which adds two zeros to a contest flyer and turns a $1,000 prize into $100,000.
Q 27Through which European language did the Caribbean word 'iwana' reach English as 'iguana'?
Spanish
Spanish speakers borrowed the name from the Taíno, an Arawak-speaking people of the Caribbean, whose word for the lizard was iwana.
Q 28Which desert lizard of the iguana family wedges into a rock crevice and inflates its lungs when disturbed?
Chuckwalla
Chuckwalla lizards puff up until they are jammed in tight, yet the Seri and Timbisha Shoshone peoples still counted them an important food.
Q 29The Galápagos land iguana gets most of its moisture by eating which plant, nearly 80% of its diet?
Prickly pear
Prickly pear cactus supplies the bulk of the land iguana's water because fresh water is scarce on the islands, though it drinks from rain pools in the wet season.
Q 30Which US island territory proposed in 2012 to cull its four million green iguanas and sell them for meat?
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico's iguanas descend from animals introduced from South America, and the island now treats the very common lizard as an invasive nuisance.