The extremely remote island of Fiji, which is hanging out way out in the ass end of the Pacific, is home to a species of iguana. That species of iguana owes its life in paradise to the incredible long-distance journey of its ancestors.
According to newly published research, those ancestors made it to Fiji from North America some 5,000 miles away—4,970 miles, to be exact. How they did it can safely fall into the category of things that are literally unbelievable.
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It examined the genetic relationships of over 4,000 iguana genes from more than 200 specimens.
The research confirmed that Fiji iguanas are most closely related to North American desert iguanas. This means that the two species likely diverged around 30 million years ago, the Fiji iguanas did it by crossing over on gigantic sheets of floating vegetation.
We Finally Know How Iguanas Ended Up in Fiji
Researchers refer to it as “rafting.” It’s when a species hops aboard a tangled mess of plans drifting out at sea that eventually carries it to a new destination. The researchers say that the iguanas’ ancient ancestors hitched a ride on one such vegetation raft in North America and somehow survived the 5,000-mile journey that took anywhere between 2 ½ to 4 months.
All they had to survive was the vegetation they were floating on. Amazingly, they didn’t eat their way through their transportation. It turns out that iguanas, due to their slower metabolism, are built for such a journey since they can go for months without food.
Rafting isn’t just a theory. Researchers have observed it in our own lifetimes. Back in 1995, green iguanas were observed traveling nearly 200 miles between Caribbean islands on hurricane debris.
The ancestors of Galápagos iguanas likely rafted from South America across 600 miles of ocean. A 5,000-mile journey from North America to Fiji seemed impossible but it seems that North American iguanas are just built different.
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