How Far Can An Iguana Raft With No Water?

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Topic: Can Iguanas raft for 7,000 miles with no water and then mate on the other side?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachylophus_fasciatus

The farthest I've seen is 200 miles.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1590/is_8_55/ai_55183046

So in other words, the trip to Fiji-Tonga would be a 35 month journey with no water...

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are you stating that 13 million years ago there was no ocean on planet Earth?

 

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No.

 

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well iguanas got small bodies...technically if they drift on a bark...the bark through condensation might provide them with adequate number of water droplets for them to live.

So yes it is possible.

 

Why? Because Wikipedia Scripture says it's true?

A 3 year journey with no water?

Odd that they couldn't find their way to make it to any other island in the world.

I guess Hume was wrong about miracles after all.

"The most likely reason for the distributional pattern of... banded iguanas is not because of a conspiracy of local environmental circumstances that somehow prevented long term colonization of every other oceanic island in the world." (McCarthy 2005)

 

Actually there are many small islands all over the Pacific ocean and the iguanas could have stopped off along the way and bred then their descendants could have floated on to another island and the bred and so on and so forth until they finally made their way across the entire ocean.

 

Too bad that never happened.

 

Can you provide information that it could not have happened? Was anyone around back then to verify exactly how they did migrateor are we speculating as to how they did actually migrate.

 

Can you provide information that it could have happened?

What islands are you talking about? And what fossils?

Here are my articles claiming that never happened:

McCarthy, D.D., Biogeography and Scientific Revolutions, The Systematist, Number 25, Pages 3-12, 2005

McCarthy, D.D., Biogeographical and Geological Evidence for a Smaller, Completely-Enclosed Pacific Basin in the Late Cretaceous, Journal of Biogeography, Volume 32, Issue 12, Pages 2161 - 2177, 2005

McCarthy, D.D., The Transpacific Zipper Effect: Disjunct Sister Taxa and Matching Geological Outlines That Link the Pacific Margins, Journal of Biogeography, Volume 30, Issue 10, Pages 1545-1561, 2003

 

The Pacific Ocean contains an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 islands (the exact number has yet to be precisely determined). Those islands lying south of the tropic of Cancer but excluding Australia are traditionally grouped into three divisions: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Inhabitants are sometimes referred to as Pacific Islanders.

Pacific islands are also sometimes collectively called Oceania [1] (although Oceania is sometimes defined as also including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago),

Melanesia means black islands. These include New Guinea (the largest Pacific island, which is divided into the sovereign nation of Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian provinces of Maluku, Papua and West Papua), New Caledonia, Zenadh Kes (Torres Strait islands,Vanuatu, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands.

Micronesia means small islands. These include the Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Most of these lie north of the equator.

Polynesia means many islands. These include New Zealand, the Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, the Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, and Easter Island. It is the largest of the three zones.

The region's islands are classified into two groups, high islands and low islands. Volcanoes form high islands, which generally can support more people and have a more fertile soil. Low islands are reefs or atolls, and are relatively small and infertile. Melanesia, the most populated of the three regions, contains mainly high islands, while most of Micronesia and Polynesia are low islands.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&star...S6151X&usg=AFQjCNEoftGUg9tndn6r_ELkO2XfHnce2Q


As far as fossiles I don't believe all 30,000 islands have been examined as of yet, have they.

 

Of those 30,000 islands banded iguanas exist on exactly 2 of those.

Why is that? And how is that possible?

Your counter-argument is precisely the counter-argument Darwin anticipated from those favoring Creationism, which is why he was careful to note such absenses from oceanic islands "cannot be accounted for by their physical conditions; indeed it seems that islands are particularly well fitted for these animals." (McCarthy 2005)

 

Given the fragile nature of small islands, the delicate balances required to support particular animals (ie the iguanas) and the turbulent nature of the Pacific ocean, it's perfectly reasonable to think that most (or at least a non-insignificant fraction) islands in the Pacific have at some time been home to some iguanas. Their habitat being destroyed by hurricanes, other animals or the island never being able to support such creatures (ie they don't breed and form a local population) would provide explainations for the majority of those islands no longer having iguanas on them. Perhaps 100,000 years ago the islands currently with iguanas didn't have them and some of ones which currently don't did. If the Pacific ocean keeps plucking them from their home and throwing them across the sea, it's highly probably that the population centres of the iguanas are dynamical, changing over time.

And OIM it's hypocritical of you to accuse us of using Wikipedia like scripture when you have clung to quotes by McCarthy, who has dubious status as a scientist, for all you're worth in this thread (and others).

 

Those went from island to island until they found a suitable home or can't you figure that out. It is like anything , if it isn't comfortable where it is , it then moves to a better area where it is happy at.

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You do treat Wikipedia as Holy Scripture. You know you do.

McCarthy has dubious status as a scientist? That's hilarious. What have you had accepted and published lately Mr. ICan'tAddorSubtractCorrectly?

 

Again I ask, what islands are you talking about? Name the islands please.

 

Although apparently unlikely, it only had to happen once in, what, a million years? Maybe more? A freak storm or tsunami could have washed a bunch out to sea, they could lick rain off the debris they were floating on. What is the alternative explanation?

 

No. They're saying it happened with dozens of poorly dispersing disjunct sister taxa on both sides of the Pacific. E.g. Chilean flat oysters in New Zealand, the plant genus Abrotonella, the tuatara in New Zealand which is descended from the sphenodontia of Patagonia, marsupials, etc., etc.

I refer you to the links you are ignoring posted above.

 

Can you summarize it? Iguanas are amazingly resiliant, and they can swim. Being lizards, they need little water.