Watch: 2 Angry Iguanas Wrestle Each Other In Starbucks Parking Lot
A pair of women who had hopped down to grab a couple of coffees at a Starbucks outlet in Boca Raton, Florida, came across a rare sight on Saturday.
What grabbed their attention in the parking lot of the coffee shop, made them stop their car, whip out their cellphone and begin recording — two angry iguanas dueling each other.
What Shannon Moskoff and her friend initially thought were some tree branches at first glance, soon began to move, startling them. In the beginning of the video recorded by them, one of the iguanas seemed to have its opponent’s head inside its mouth.
"Oh my God, they're eating each other," one woman is heard saying in the background. "What the — I've never seen this in my life. Are they stuck?" one of them asked.
As the close to two-minute-long clip progressed, the first iguana let go of the second iguana and both of them got into a vicious fight pattern, hissing and snapping at each other’s neck.
The duel of the two iguanas, as they tried to push each other around and butt into each other’s way, was livened up by the hilarious commentary by Moskoff and her friend, who continued to try and figure out why the creatures might be fighting throughout the video.
Unfortunately, the women were holding up traffic in the parking lot as they recorded the video and hence, had to move from the spot to make way for other vehicles. As a result, they were unable to witness the end of the fight which means there is no way to know which iguana won the duel.
While there is no way to tell if the iguanas spotted by Moskoff and her friend were male or female, according to Green Iguana Society, “adult males can get extremely aggressive and territorial toward one another, and will fight to the death if allowed access to each other.”
While spotting a pair of dueling iguanas is rare, the reptiles themselves are quite a common sight in Florida. The state is home to millions of iguanas, some of whom are often found feasting on people’s lawns, and leaving their droppings on patios and pool sides.
“People that move here from other states say, ‘Oh, my God, there’s a whole colony of 'Jurassic Park' things in my yard, what do I do?’” said Aaron Joyce, owner of Wild Cargo Pets, ABC affiliate WPBF reported.
While iguanas have always existed, their number seemed to be growing at an abnormal rate in the recent years in Florida.
“There’s no real way to come up with a valid estimate of the number of green iguanas in Florida,” Richard Engeman, a biologist for the National Wildlife Research Centre, said, the Telegraph reported. “But the number would be gigantic. You could put any number of zeros behind a number, and I would believe it.”
The growing population of the enormous lizards can create havoc for people who have to co-exist with them. The underground burrows and tunnels that they build to lay eggs can collapse with time, causing pavements to cave and damage power and phone lines.
Grace DeVita, of Hollywood, Florida, experienced damage first hand when an iguana chewed through her office’s power lines.
“There was an iguana with a piece of wire hanging out of his mouth,” she said. "It took two days for power to be restored the first time, and then it happened again two days later.”
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