spikes

Question
QUESTION: Hi, I got my Iguana when he was about 1 to 1 1/2 years old. He is now about 4 1/2 , My question is about his spikes. He only had the ones on his head and a few on the lower part of his back until about a year ago. He started growing the ones on his tail  about a year ago and the ones on his back are starting to grow now. All of the pictures I have seen of Iguanas (all ages)have all of their spikes from head to the end of their tail.  I would like to know why mine is late in growing them? He doesn't live in a cage,goes outside in the sun about 3+ times a week,gets a lot of attention and eats well. I live in AZ so I try to spray him with water a few times a day but I only recently started doing it several times a day. His skin is not dry,but shines,which I take as good health. I have read a lot about Iguanas but have been unable to find any information to answer my question.
Have you ever heard of this before?
Jo


Trogdor   ANSWER: Jo,

Sounds like you have your iguana under great care and he sounds very healthy by the way you describe him. I had a very similar incident with my Trogdor, whom I have raised since he hatched and have always given him the utmost care. All of the sudden his beautiful, long spikes started falling off one at a time and he became bald. In fact, he still is bald. I took him to the veterinarian and I ended up with a $70.00 bill and a fish oil supplement to feed him via syringe into his mouth 9which I do not use). I did not ever get a straight answer about what could have happened, but the vet concluded that this was virtually meaningless to his overall health and that this in no way compromised his health.

I was relatively unhappy that I did not know the reason for him losing his spikes, so I did some extensive research, typing in a lot of different terms into google and contacting a lot of different people who reported "spikes" problems in their iguanas. I came to this conclusion:

The spikes, fingers, toes, and tail are often trouble spots for the iguana to shed succesfully. Although a swimming in the bathtub can resolve most of the problems, sometimes extra steps are needed to prevent the accumulation of sheds and the cutting off of blood to the area. If it is not taken care of, the area past the restrictive shed can wither, become gangrenous, and/or die.

This means that if the shedding scales accumulated over the spikes at any given time because he was not able to shed his old scales successfully, the blood flow to the spikes was most likely cut off and the spikes themselves died and fell off with the shed. It is very possible that your iguana had a "bad shed" similar to this in his early days and just never re-grew his spikes. It is not a guarantee that the spikes will re-grow, some iguanas will re-grow theirs and some won't.

This is the only reasonable explanation I can provide for the absence of spikes and I urge you to not be concerned about his internal health, as the spikes are a superficial growth and I do not know of any diseases that cause spikes to fall off and I do not know of any diseases that result from spikes falling off.

I hope this helps!

REVISION: P.S. I attached an image of Trogdor after his spikes fell off of his neck and you may need to click on the blue hyperlink that says "Trogdor" at the top right of your answer to view the photo.

Sara J. Gwerder
President
Raptor Rescue Iguana Sanctuary
Shreveport, LA
www.RaptorRescue.org

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Sibbie   QUESTION: Hi Sara,
I just wanted to add one thing for the readers......rubbing mineral oil on the spikes help with shedding to prevent the loss of spikes. I am happy to learn that Sibbie does not have a condition that prevented the spikes from growing. Thank you so much for your help.
Jo

Answer
Insufficient humidity is a huge cause for the bad shed to happen and the spikes to be lost, I just wanted to mention that.