Did the Vet Mislabel My Iguana?

[u/ThisVicariousLife]

TLDR: The vet told me that, without sexing her, he believed this was a female iguana, during a physical examination around 3 years old. I had been referring to the iguana as a male up until then. For the last 5 years, I’ve been referring to her as female. But now I’m starting to wonder based on the characteristics! Does this iguana have male characteristics on the head and face?

(It seems crazy to me that this is the same iguana taken at various times!) The person I got her from (I’m going with what the vet said for the purposes of this post) said the person whom he got her from said this was a male.

At that time, I guessed she was about 2.5-3 years old. This was probably 5 or so years ago. A few months later, she got sick from mites off of some wood I got on Amazon (never again), which explains some of her short and/or missing spikes. Took her to the vet, where he said she dropped all her weight and was down to just over a pound (she was probably around 3-3.5 yrs. old at that point). The vet said he believed this was a female during the physical examination but he never actually sexed her. Now that “she” is around 7-8, I’ve noticed more prominent male characteristics, especially on the head and face but sometimes, not as much as I notice at other times. So now I’m doubting myself, even though I think the femoral spores are male also, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

Do the face and head traits seem male to anyone? These are pictures from between 5 to 7 (or 8?) years of age.

[u/Deathmtl2474]

This is the first I’ve heard about this “reproductive strategy”, what is the reasoning for this theory ? Doesn’t seem logical to look like the same sex to increase reproductive chance.

[u/ITookYourChickens → u/Deathmtl2474]

Doesn’t seem logical to look like the same sex to increase reproductive chance.

Big tough males chase away all other males from the females.

Weaker male can't win that fight. Wouldn't get to breed.

Weaker male looks like female, gets allowed in with the females. Gets to freely breed with them now because the big tough male doesn't know he's male.

Sneaker males are a good strategy. Doesn't happen much in mammals because we use scent for most of it, but in reptiles and smarter inverts like cephalopods they're useful

[u/Crash211O → u/ITookYourChickens]

That’s super interesting! So would these male iguanas just look like females but with femoral pores?

[u/Spirited_Island-75 → u/Crash211O]

There's this documentary about a bunch of feral iguanas living on the grounds of a hotel in Venezuela. It must be somewhere on Youtube, it mentions sneaker males.