New invasive lizards Populate Florida’s ecosystems!! What are they?!?

all right y'all hey we are back out here it's another beautiful day here in south florida your boy the iguana man and we have a friend with us we got our buddy steve what's up man from iguanaspecialist.com how you guys doing how's it going steve how's it going doing great we're doing great we're at my home in my backyard it's gorgeous back here bro it's a jungle man i'm pretty sure there's some iguanas back here right a few iguanas absolutely raccoons jerry cats we got the amoebas running around we got a little everything out there steve's been posting some really cool stuff about these interesting lizards that i'm not quite sure if a lot of people are aware of okay they're called green amoebas and steve right here he's actually trapped several of them he's gonna see if he can grab one out and show you oh wow look at that thing right there look at that thing whoa oh whoa watch out he's good he's feisty i got him wow look at that y'all so a lot of people have been seeing and saying reports of these weird ground lizards walking around their fast and they're basically heavily populated in certain areas of florida so our boy steve right here at iguana specialist dot specialist.com actually caught several of them and i wanted to come here and show you guys these things up close and personal so you guys can kind of see what they are wow look at these things steve oh they want to get me i'm telling you they're not happy with me at all so you're seeing these things can you tell me a little bit about the behavior of what you're seeing when you're when you're when you're catching these things or what um well the way i catch them i'll say i catch them in a trap um they are so fast they are one of the fastest lizards around uh you're going to play hell trying to get them you know chasing after them anything yeah you're not you won't get close enough to them with a catch ball the catch bowl has got to be i mean so lightweight everything the lines got to be light um i use a trap unfortunately i cannot show the bait but special bait you got a special trap and obviously you're pretty successful at catching them because in the bucket there are several other specimens yes but this is another invasive species out here in south florida that i just wanted to show you guys real quick look at these things right here nevas giant amoebas amiva hamiva or the south american ground lizard or the amazon race runner now it's a species of lizard like i said found in central and south america and the caribbean islands as you can see they have a streamlined body a pointed head and a slightly forked tongue and they have very muscular hind legs they can grow approximately 18 to 20 inches for an alpha and both sexes have random black specks on the mountings along their side i can show you how to tell the difference actually really yeah okay so your big males your big ones i mean just like most animals yeah they are more speckled through here they do have that brown stripe but there's that green speckle through here uh the females are definitely smaller even a your females also tend to have a green head not all the time but you see that's a very pronounced brown line going down the side yeah that's a female right there awesome awesome that's the way that i can tell and in all honesty it's nothing scientific i could just tell by their behavior watching their movements yeah while watching the mail chase the female during during you know watching him follow the female and make his advances during mating season so so oh whoa so the male usually has like you said like kind of like a greener and more colors on them right yeah well more towards the bottom but they have more so you can see the bro you know the brown stripe that the males do have but like this one here this is uh this is a larger one well even though there are some sponges here you know there's a there's a definite difference here between the difference in the splotches this is more of a streamlined brown stripe going down the side so when you look at those in there you can see all the white spots on and most those are going to be the males with all those spots oh okay so white white spots yeah and the bigger ones are are more than likely male 1 yes and in all honesty in the traps i haven't caught any just i haven't caught any small ones i mean they they i don't know if it's that they're not going in there they're too small to sit off the trap they set them off with no problem nice nice now they live basically on forest floor off during sheltering underneath logs and leaf litters and they have they make tunnels y'all a lot of these animals out here they make tunnels so they might you might not see them on certain days but on the right day where it's sunny and they can come out and bask and feed then you will see a lot of them so guys the diet of these lizards is mainly insects okay they love grasshoppers butterflies cockroaches even beetles and termites and other insect larvae now they could eat frogs and other lizards such as the knolls and spiders in captivity and mealworms guys mealworms and crickets obviously if they were pets they would just absolutely destroy those and during the breeding season y'all the females lay several clutches of eggs from march to december that's probably why we're seeing a lot of them out here huh exactly why i mean i matter of fact this one you say that two of these were the large male following the female so when the female actually i had two traps side by side the female went in the first trap got caught and honestly didn't even realize she was caught sitting there eating still eating still eating the you know what i was feeding them i almost gave you away my gave away my uh my secret there but it was still eating what uh what i put in there um so the male wanted to get in there with the female following the female following the female and just trying you know couldn't figure out a way to get in the females cage went in the other cage because they were touching and that's how i got the mail so it was a male you know without you know he was he was definitely trying to pursue her all day she was absolutely courting her without a doubt interesting interesting all right y'all so guys these are actually believe it or not invasive species here in the state of florida um just because they're non-native to this ecosystem and there's not that much research to find out what are the negative effects over here but we do know some positive effects of these animals is they do eat bugs but that there's not enough data or research um documented yet well without it absolutely so you know a couple things with um as far as the native species i've been down here uh crap so 1990 uh i've been down here um so when i first got down here you see a lot of the green and those the american chameleons there used to be a ton of them now in my yard i see a few more in my yard because i do control the invasive species in my yard for the most part but you know you rarely see them i mean you go days and days without seeing them but you'll see 50 to 100 other species you know invasive invasive species right yeah absolutely so so that right there is definitely some proof guys that these invasive species are having a negative impact on native animals and if they're eating the native green and nols who knows what other absolutely native animals they're eating they could be eating who who knows baby yeah baby anything well listen it's not so much that they're eating the babies of that species they could be eating the food of a native species leaving the native species not enough to go around which you know which is part of the problem with the american chameleon they don't have enough food you know you see all the little brown chameleons are the cuban brown anoles out here they've taken up a good portion of it these things have actually exploded in about i want to say the past five years where they've really you know they've got a foothold you know they've got a full foothold in a lot of areas that's insane so not only potentially can they be eating native species but they will become uh competing for territory and food of the native species so it's kind of like a double whammy absolutely it's kind of like a double whammy y'all so this is just you know one of the reasons why invasive species are not good in any ecosystem uh they don't belong here and the native animals and territories definitely definitely can suffer well hey that was just a quick little video i want to give a huge shout out to our friend steve iguana specialist.com uh he's over here in davey florida if you guys are having problems with these anivas and you need steve to come out there to trap them or any other animals you do other animals as well absolutely i do uh the spiny tail iguanas green iguanas raccoons some people want the possums gone i just you know um most people don't most people actually want me to put them on the property but um yeah absolutely there happens to be a snake whatever okay see what's the best way to for people to contact you bud uh uh excuse me iguana gmail.com iguanaspecialist gmail.com we're gonna put that right here also in the description down below also you guys can see his website right over there go check him out if you guys are dealing with these invasive anivas right here or any other nuisance wildlife and you're in the davy area go ahead give our boy steve a call y'all he'll come out there definitely secure the bag and get your problem under control but look at that right there guys absolutely amazing our boy definitely knows what he's doing he collected all of these and what you caught all these in what in a day right uh two days okay in two days so you caught all of these in two days that's not bad dude yeah that's not bad man well guys that's all we have for you guys today drop some comments let me know what you guys think about this new invasive species and um you know let us know what what other trapping methods you think might be efficient if you have any experience but uh that's all we have for y'all today we'll see you guys on the next video

Channel: THE IGUANA MAN

Views: 132,987

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Id: 9yj0SNmyZWk

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021