Footage of a so-called “Godzilla Iguana” first made headlines a few years back, but I only came across the video recently. The clip immediately captured my attention, which made me keen to share it with our audience.
The massive marine creature was spotted hunting underwater by Steve Winkworth, a diver, who recorded the footage at Cabo Marshall, a dive site located on the north coast of Isabela, in the Galapagos Islands.
Though the creature depicted in the video looks very much like it might be a stone-cold predator on the hunt for unsuspecting fishies, marine iguanas (scientific name: Amblyrhynchus cristatus) actually observe a strict vegetarian diet, subsisting primarily off algae and other plant life.
The marine iguana is a rare beast found in the Galapagos Islands. They are similar to land iguanas but have a few key differences in their physical appearance. They are known to have flatter tails, darker coloring, shorter snouts, and more extended claws than their land counterpart.
Large male marine iguanas dive for their food. However, smaller males and their female counterparts are prone to forage during low tide in the intertidal zone. On that basis, we have drawn the conclusion that the creature in the video must be male.
The Godzilla Iguana featured in Winkworth’s footage is six feet in length, making the creature taller than an average-sized human. You can see the massive lizard hunting on the ocean floor in the crystal-clear video clip captured by the diver. After recording the creature in his natural habitat, Winkworth uploaded the footage to Reddit, where it proceeded to go viral. You can check it out for yourself right here.
Categorized: News
