From the Wikipedia
I don’t get how this is possible. Wouldn’t the caiman or crocodile eat the iguanas?
Obviously they don’t, so how do the iguanas protect themselves if they are sharing a nest site? Or is it that the crocodile doesn’t know the difference between baby crocs and baby iguanas?
Crocs and caymans are not (how can I say this?) deep. It’s Mama Croc’s nest and she laid the eggs, so those must be her kids. Crocs can’t count, so I assume the iguanas just add their eggs to an existing nest that is warm and well protected, and has plenty of room. That really isn’t as bad as what some “deeper” creatures do. Most cuckoos are “brood parasites,” in that Mama Cuckoo will lay an egg of her own in another bird’s nest while tossing out one of the original eggs. Apparently, some birds can not only count but also gauge the size of the parents by the size of their eggs, because if the other parents are large enough to support more than one of her kids she will repeat it another couple times. The parent birds may be surprised when they try to keep Baby Huey well fed, but while they may be able to count, their impression that they have the Best Baby Ever! blinds them to the fact that they’ve been literally cuckolded.
Actually, Crocs do eat adult iguanas using the nest site. I have seen some pretty amazing photos of a mama croc eating a female iguana that was trying to use its nest site here in Panama. (I’m sure it’s the very same nesting site cited by Wikipedia. It’s a well-studied nesting site on a small island called Slothia off Barro Colorado Island, the research station of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. I used to watch the crocs and iguanas using the nest site myself with a telescope we had set up in the dining hall, but I never actually saw a croc eat an iguana myself.)
The thing is, the iguanas ain’t that bright. They just see the croc nest site as a suitable area for their own nests; they aren’t able to detect that a croc is using it as well until the mama croc nails them. However, if a female does manage to lay some eggs there, the hatchlings may be OK because they are too small for a croc to bother snarfing.
Thanks for the replies, makes sense. Evidently iguanas are cute lizards but poor parents
