Reptilia · Squamata
Ctenosaura pectinataWiegmann, 1834
Western Spiny-tailed Iguana
Photograph placed in the public domain, CC0, via iNaturalist
A day-active, plant-eating lizard from the Neotropic region, reaching 400 mm snout to vent.
Also called Guerreran Spiny-tailed Iguana.
Reptilia › Squamata › Iguanidae › Ctenosaura
- Grows to
- 400mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 16years
Longer than 58% of all iguanas anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 129 to 750 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
42 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2020
- Population trend
- Decreasing
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 16years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 37°C
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009, Slavens and Slavens 1999: 8.2, Petzold 2008: 16+
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 400mm15.5 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 284.5mm11 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 279.6mm11 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 54.55mm2.25 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 56.6mm2.25 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 2724.7g6 lb
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 968g2.1 lb
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 5.7g0.2 oz
Heimes 2022 (max 400 mm)
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Herbivorous
- How it hunts
- Active foraging
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal, saxicolous, terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Shrubland
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Dry Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 2000m
- Range size
- 358,772km²
- Density · highest recorded
- 1.01per hectare
Omnivorous (Conant and Collins, Cruz-Saenz et al. 2008) / Herbivorous (Cooper and Vitt 2002), adults predominantly Herbivorous, juveniles primarily insectivorous (Pianka and Vitt 2003, Durtsche 2000, Hibbitts and Hibbitts 2015 see Ramirez Bautista and Arizmendi 2004, Heimes 2022), 70% plants and the rest invertebrates - but also cannibalistic (Sanchez-Hernandez et al. 2017), mostly plants (Barraza-Soltero et al. 2024)
Active (Hernandez-Salinas et al. 2023), sit and wait (Cavalcanti et al. 2023, but it is herbivorous!)
e.g., Mata-Silva et al. 2016, Cruz-Saenz et al. 2008
mostly Terrestrial, rock fences (Duellman 1961) / saxicolous (Evans 1951, Hardy and McDiarmid 1969, Davis and Dixon 1961)/ saxicolous, some arboreal (Davis and Smith 1953), adults mainly saxicolous, juveniles more arboreal (Heimes 2022)
1460-1746 (Mata-Silva et al. 2016a,b), 1425 (Andrade-Soto et al. 2017), near sea level to 1900 (Heimes 2022)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 28.05eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 10–52eggs
- Mean clutch
- 25–31.1eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 1per year
- Clutches a year
- 1per year
- First breeds at
- 36months
ovoviviparous, Cruz-Saenz et al. 2008
11-49 (Ramirez Bautista and Arizmendi 2004), 12-50, average 25-30 (Hibbitts and Hibbitts 2015), Castro-Franco et al. 2011 (mean 31.1 eggs ±11.6, range of 12.0 – 52.0, CV = 37.5 %, also cited in Heimes 2022), "Females lay an average of ~38–45 eggs (range 28–49)." (Rueda-Zozaya et al. 2021), 10-49 (Langner et al. 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Pleurodonta
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Wiegmann
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1834
- Type locality
- Mexico
Keeping one
5 ft 3 in × 5 ft 3 in × 5 ft 3 in(160 × 160 × 160 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 and climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Recorded both on the ground and climbing, so this is the larger of the two rules in every dimension.
Lives on rock, so stable hard surfaces and basking ledges suit it.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length of 15.5 in (400 mm), at 4 × 4 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 99 °F (37 °C).
Preferred body temperature, recorded in a laboratory gradient where the animal could choose freely. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
Feeding
Prey size does not apply. A herbivore's diet is judged on fibre, on the ratio of calcium to phosphorus, and on avoiding plants high in oxalates.
The animal does not take prey items. This is established practice, not a measurement.
222kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 2,725 g, the heaviest recorded for Western Spiny-tailed Iguana — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Sex decided by
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Iguanidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Ctenosaura pectinata. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ctenosaura-pectinata
@misc{ctenosaura_pectinata_2026,
title = {Ctenosaura pectinata},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/ctenosaura-pectinata}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.