Reptilia · Squamata
Cyclura lewisiGrant, 1941
Grand Cayman Iguana
Photograph by marique, CC BY, via iNaturalist
A ground-dwelling, day-active, plant-eating lizard from the Neotropic region, reaching 550 mm snout to vent.
Also called Grand Cayman Blue Iguana.
Reptilia › Squamata › Iguanidae › Cyclura
- Grows to
- 550mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Herbivorous
- Active
- Diurnal
- Lives up to
- 69years
Longer than 81% 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
37 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
- Endangered
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2012
- Population trend
- Increasing
- Red List criteria
- B1ab(iii)+2ab(iii)
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 69years
"Average longevity is not known, but may be in excess of 50 years. One male, whose final home was at a US zoo, was known to have lived for at least 69 years." (IUCN 2014), at least 54, estimated 69 in captivity (Henderson and Powell 2009)
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 550mm21.5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 97.55mm3.75 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 97.6mm3.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 7020.3g15 lb
max 550 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
How it lives
- Diet
- Herbivorous
- How it hunts
- Sit and wait
- Active
- Diurnal
- Where it lives
- Terrestrial
- Habitat
- Forest, Shrubland
- Biome
- Mangroves
- Region
- Neotropic
- Mainland or island
- Found only on islands
- Elevation · above sea level
- 1–6m
- Range size
- 211km²
- Density
- 4–6per hectare
- Home range · largest recorded
- 135,600m2
Banfi et al. 2023
IUCN (1 to 6)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Average clutch
- 11.5eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–22eggs
- Clutches a year
- 0.5–2per year
- First breeds at
- 36months
1-22 (IUCN), 6-10 (Henderson and Powell 2009)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Pleurodonta
- Subspecies
- No
- Described by
- Grant
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- No
- Described in
- 1941
- Type locality
- Cayman Islands
Keeping one
Grand Cayman Iguana is assessed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Species at risk in the wild are often covered by CITES and by national law, which decide what may be bought, sold, moved across a border or kept at all — and captive-bred and wild-caught animals are usually treated differently. Check the rules where you are before acquiring one. Nothing below is a judgement about keeping this species; it is what a published welfare standard says about space, and what the animal itself was measured doing.
7 ft 3 in × 7 ft 3 in × 4 ft 6 in(220 × 220 × 138 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes ground-dwelling species at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times snout-vent length.
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 21.5 in (550 mm), at 4 × 4 × 2.5 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
No preferred body temperature has been recorded for Grand Cayman Iguana. Rather than repeat a number from a care sheet, this page leaves it out.
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.
515kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 7,020 g, the heaviest recorded for Grand Cayman 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 female mean
- — 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 female · snout to vent
- — 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 · a typical adult
- — Body mass · adult female, mean
- — Body mass at hatching
- — Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Mean clutch · smallest reported
- — Mean clutch · largest reported
- — Clutches in a year
- — 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
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Active in
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). Cyclura lewisi. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/cyclura-lewisi
@misc{cyclura_lewisi_2026,
title = {Cyclura lewisi},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/cyclura-lewisi}
}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.