Hi All,

There is huge Iguana at bronkies. We saw it today as we were approaching the "bridge" to cross to the new parking. It was chilling there. When I say big I mean between 2 and 3 meters long. needless to say I screeched like a little girly. Eish!

Dont know if they dangerous or not just keep a look out.

Andrew

wheres the pics?

Monitor lizard? Iguanas are not native to SA.

Did it look something like this:

Indeed it did. Are they dangerous? Gnna take my cam is week to snap up some shots.

we get a lot of those at our farm in KZN, they're not aggressive, however, I would prefer to stay away from them as they do bite! as far as I know iguanas are indigenous, might be wrong though.

Aren't "iguana" and locally "leguaan" just names for a monitor lizard?

Seen them quite a few times. I don't think they are aggressive but would probably bite if cornered / handled / used for aid. If they do bite I seem to remember they have filthy mouths and a bite will get infected.

I have always known that to be a leguan or Rock monitor, like most reptiles if you dont mess with it, it wont bother you. They can inflict a bite and nastier scratches, they are fast and incredibly strong. (an interesting animal to restrain)

Iguana is sort of used as a generic name, kinda like "buffs"
Green Iguanas are indigenous to South America and are the only known vegetarian reptile they are actually illegal in SA as they thrive in our conditions and are known to be carriers of Horse sickness.

@Chris F -

Thanks for imparting your knowledge / ability to use google (delete where appropriate)

Last time we caught a big one an arm got broken by the violent slashing of its tail.
Even small ones are very very strong.

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‎"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure, life is either a daring adventure or nothing" - Helen Keller

Always called it a leguaan.These are my favourite animals.
I remember on patrol in northern Namibia some clown thought it would be a good idea to jump on the back of a small one (about 1.5 m). Big boy with full pack, rifle, full ammo plus extra belts for a Browning and extra water for the dog.
Mr leguaan threw him and his kit off like a rag doll - provided hilarity for weeks...

BTW Nic - any particular reason for catching them?

C ya,
Bruce

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LCD SCUM

@Bruce,

Kids messing around on the farm... not always proud of what we got up to but we never intentionally killed anything (actually killed lots of stuff with my slingshot and other home made weapons, but we always ate anything we killed)

This particular incident was to move an especially large specimen form the farm dam, because the labourers were very afraid of it.

Also wrangled and bred snakes for pet shops, wasn't allowed to keep any of the poisonous snakes we caught but we still caught them

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‎"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure, life is either a daring adventure or nothing" - Helen Keller

@Nic
Cool.
Fully agree with the "you kill it you eat it" rule.
In fact I would like to live in a world where it was reversed: "you eat it, you kill it",
be a lot more vegetarians (but not me!)...
C ya

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LCD SCUM

I grew up on a farm in the Mpumalanga Lowveld. I shared a 'kuil' in the river with a 'likkewaan' (leguaan/iguana, etc), the same thing you guys talked about - a BIG one. He was quite accommodating and made space when I rocked up for a swim.
These beasts (like most other) are more afraid of you than you are of it. They are known to inflict serious damage with their tails and jaws, so I wouldnt push it into a corner, but they are otherwise quite placid.
They are super tough buggers who are slow to anger. When cornered they can fight like demons. Let them be, and they will return the favour.

"filthy mouths" Chris F, you may be thinking of the Komodo dragon. It has some horrible bacteria in its saliva that kills things it bites quickly.

I agree, I am in the process of making sure my wife and kids have the opportunity (like I have) to have processed most of the foods we buy at the supermarket, so that they can have a better appreciation and understanding of how and where our food comes from.

I honestly think that if you want to eat veal, you have to personally take they baby sheep away from its mother at birth, place the wire that constricts its blood flow (around the neck) which stunts its growth and place it in the tiny box it will live in for the next 4 months before going and killing it.

I myself am not a fully practicing vegetarian, although I'd say I'm ideologically a vegetarian. I have no qualms against hunting or eating meat, I am at peace with my own tastes and desires and have a full understanding of the consequences of my diet. I try my best to minimize undue harm to animals and the environment.

If vegetarianism was an easy and practical lifestyle to follow I would be one of the first to practice it 99% of the time (between hunting, and the odd steak) as my meat intake is so minimal simply due to the cost of it, that I find myself eating a mostly vegetarian diet anyway.

I am surely not fooled by such wonder products such as soya which in fact are hugely harmful to the environment to produce. I await the day for Vegetarianism to be environmentally sustainable then I'd be the first in line.

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‎"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure, life is either a daring adventure or nothing" - Helen Keller

Agreed, in KZN when I was growing up Likkewanne were very common where ever you decided to swim.. much like Verkleurmannetjies which driving home on a hot Sunday afternoon were so prolific on tar roads on the South Coast that we could collect at least a dozen between the lot of us to play with and release into the bush behind our house in the afternoon, sad to say my son is now 7yrs old and in the 6yrs we lived on the South Coast we maybe saw 3-4 in total... If I see one now I stop and help it across the road because with so few left, I don't see how we can afford them to get ridden over.

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‎"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure, life is either a daring adventure or nothing" - Helen Keller

Most people don't have the land to keep animals for food.
A friend of mine raised two pigs (appropriately named 'Parma' and 'Ham') and when they grew to size he got the rifle out... best damn ribs I've ever had!

Many farmers out this way (Robertson Valley and surrounds) I am told won't keep livestock because of thieving. I've heard of one farmer that has a heart rate monitor on one sheep in the flock which phones him when it's heart rate goes up.
His sheep 'calls' him twice a day at feeding times, but if the sheep calls when it's not feeding time then he goes down to see what is going on.

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Climb ZA - Administrator

When I said filthy mouths I meant they swear like f*cking troopers

That could be it, but I think they are all carniverous so will have a certain amount of bacteria that won't cause much happiness. Either way getting bitten won't be a treat.

A blog post I recently wrote on Meat:

I like meat: it tastes great and up until very recently I have seen very little need to change. I have no issue with eating a farmed animal as fundamentally Man is god from their perspective: we created the animal, dictated its life and later chose an opportune time for its demise. No, I have no problem with any of this.

I recently stumbled across a document by the IPCC (basically a UN body) which was describing the damage to the earth done by farming, and that most of this damage was done by livestock, either directly or indirectly. It concluded by saying the largest positive contribution an individual can make to Mother Earth is to go vegetarian, vegan ideally. Offended- but trusting the UN- I did some more research and found that not only were their findings true, but also that their findings are old news.

About 30% of the land on Earth is used to sustain livestock.
Ok big deal, right? Yes actually as the human population grows we need more land for farming which encourages farmers to turn wild, indigenous land into grazing or other farmlands. Most of the famous destruction to the Amazon is not because people want hard wood furniture, but because the farmers need the land for cattle, and as a bonus get a once off wood sale out of it. In a sense cattle are killing the Amazon.



“Who cares about other countries, South Africa doesn’t have rainforests, and anyway we farm our own beef.” Correct, but for how long has Dept of Water and Forestry told us “every drop counts”? It takes about 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk, and if you tried to save water by not showering for a year, one 300g steak would than ruin all that smelliness, as it takes about 25tons of water to produce a kilo of beef!

The most economic way of farming cattle is to grain feed them as you can pack them more densely on a farm and don’t have to wait 3 days for the meat to cure. By this method you reduce the space needed to farm beef, but isn’t it daft to grow crops to feed to animals then man eats the animals? Think of all that energy going into meat production, and lost as the animal digests the grain. The average South African consumes about 40kgs of meat a year (it was 42kgs before the recession and EU average is about 100kgs), which is about 2 solid hamburgers a week. This means that- assuming half the meat if beef and the other Chicken) each South African’s annual meat consumption cost the country 520 tons of water. As we number about 50 million people that means 26 000 000 000 tons of water, or an area the size of Cape Town’s City Bowl submerged to the height of Table Mountain of water used in the production of meat to satisfy our annual needs. Fortunately we import 15% of our meat, so the number isn’t quite that bad, just take off 150m off the top and impose it on Australia, Argentina and Brazil (Amazon).

One cow produces roughly as much green-house gasses as 18 cars over the same period so effectively your largest contribution to global warming is from beef, not cars or Eskoms coal power stations which alone make South Africans the worlds’ worst producer of CO2 per capita. It is by this statement alone that makes a vegetarian more eco-friendly then the local-organic-meat-eating-carbon-neutral-cycling-to-work- bunny-hugger out! Recycling: please you’re whispering against waterfalls!

Now i am not saying stop eating meat- that’s your choice and anyway I still do- but at the very least reduce your Consumption of it, and who knows maybe you will learn those health benefits vegetarians’ talk about. Instead I have a challenge: if you are on The Edge you are going outdoors regularly because you love to do so, but your eating habits are destroying nature more than your SUV and the heated towel rack back home. Think of this as a solution to the moral dilemma of your lifestyles’ impact on Earth- reducing your meat consumption would make a far larger contribution than not going to that race 1000kms away.

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Sandbagging is a dirty game

Next we'll receive a talk on the impact of smoking weed while driving a turbo charged intercooled diesel versus riding a cow to work while tripping on tik.

I saw an insert on monitor lizards that stated that they are infact venomous, (not deadly) it was about monitors in Sri-Lanka so I don't know about the SA ones. Their mouths are also very dirty so infection is common. So don't let them bite you.

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Fat men are harder to kidnap

Gila Monsters are the only venomous lizards that I know of.

I wonder if Likkewaan tastes good...

Tastes like chicken.

Probably.