How does the green iguana see?
The green iguana (Iguana iguana) is a reptile in the order not recorded. Its eyes belong to the vision type Diurnal reptile tetrachromat.
Measured in this species: night vision and motion (flicker fusion). One measured dial: a value other than colour or sharpness is measured in this species; colour and sharpness are not measured here. Every value below carries its evidence level and sources; nothing is typed by hand.
See your photo as the green iguanaThis species is part of the full catalogue in the tool (full unlock). Your photo stays on your device.
What stands out
- It has three colour receptor classes, like most people, but one of them sees ultraviolet.
- It stops seeing flicker at 68.5 Hz, against 60 Hz for people in this dataset, so fast motion looks about 1.1 times slower to it.[12][13]
- Activity pattern: diurnal.
The six dials
Evidence levels: how the tiers work. "Measured" means a value measured in this species; "Estimated" values come from a close relative or an eye-size formula.
| Dial | Value | Evidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colour | Colour receptors 3 receptor classes: 365 nm (UVS), 452 nm (SWS (blue)), 533 nm (MWS (green)) receptor set of nearest measured relative Teratoscincus scincus (same class Squamata) | Group default | [1][2] |
| Ultraviolet yes: at least one receptor peaks in the ultraviolet | Group default | ||
| Sharpness | No value in the catalogue. | ||
| Field of view | No value in the catalogue. | ||
| Sharp zones (foveas) | Number of foveas 2 mode of species-v1 relatives in class Squamata: Anolis carolinensis, Furcifer pardalis | Group default | [3][4] |
| Fovea type central fovea, temporal | Group default | [3][4] | |
| Night vision | Activity pattern diurnal mode of 6 rows (of 6 rows): Diurnal; diurnal; nocturnal | Measured (not re-verified) | [5][6][7][8][9][10] |
| Rods vs cones cone-dominated nocturnal -> rod-dominated; crepuscular / cathemeral / mixed -> mixed; diurnal -> cone-dominated | Derived | [5][6][7][8][9][10] | |
| Motion (flicker fusion) | Flicker fusion frequency 68.5 Hz median of 2 bright-light rows (behavioural/whole-eye ERG rows; all rows: [57.0, 80.0]) | Measured | [11] |
Related animals
- Green anole same vision type
- Red-eared slider same vision type
- Anole lizards (Anolis cristatellus) same vision type
- Anole lizards (Anolis grahami) same vision type
- Anole lizards (Anolis gundlachi) same vision type
- Anole lizards (Anolis lineatopus) same vision type
More reptiles: all reptiles with measured vision data.
Sources
- Longcore T. 2023. A compendium of photopigment peak sensitivities and visual spectral response curves of terrestrial wildlife to guide design of outdoor nighttime lighting. Basic Appl Ecol 73:40-50. doi:10.1016/j.baae.2023.09.002. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8432720
- VPOD in-vivo (MSP / single-cell) lambda max compendium, file scp_cleaned.csv, VPOD GitHub (Frazer et al. 2025 bioRxiv 10.1101/2025.08.22.671864). github.com/VisualPhysiologyDB/visual-physiology-opsin-db/tree/main/scripts_n_notebooks/vpod_ML_workflows/mine_n_match/data_sources/lmax/vpod
- species_v1:Fleishman et al. 1988 / Makaretz & Levine 1980
- species_v1:Ott & Schaeffel 1995
- Angielczyk KD, Schmitz L 2014. Nocturnality in synapsids predates the origin of mammals by over 100 million years. Proc R Soc B 281: 20141642. Dryad doi:10.5061/dryad.1v8kj.. doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.1642
- Banks MS, Sprague WW, Schmoll J, Parnell JAQ, Love GD. 2015. Science Advances 1:e1500391. doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1500391
- Choiniere JN, Neenan JM, Schmitz L, Ford DP, Chapelle KEJ, Balanoff AM, Sipla JS, Georgi JA, Walsh SA, Norell MA, Xu X, Clark JM, Benson RBJ. 2021. Evolution of vision and hearing modalities in theropod dinosaurs. Science 372:610-613. doi:10.1126/science.abe7941. Data: https://osf.io/teq73/. doi.org/10.1126/science.abe7941
- Schmitz & Motani 2011. Nocturnality in dinosaurs inferred from scleral ring and orbit morphology. Science 332:705. Comparative data redeposited in Xing et al. 2020 supplementary information (Zenodo).. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3591994
- Meiri 2024. SquamBase: a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecol Biogeogr (data Zenodo 10602503).. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10602503
- Moura et al. 2024. A phylogeny-informed characterisation of global tetrapod traits addresses data gaps and biases. PLoS Biol 22:e3002658. TetrapodTraits v3.0.1.. doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22536349
- Lafitte A, Sordello R, Legrand M, Nicolas V, Obein G, Reyjol Y. 2022. A flashing light may not be that flashy: A systematic review on critical fusion frequencies. PLoS ONE 17(12): e0279718. S10 File (CFF database). doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279718
- Healy K, McNally L, Ruxton GD, Cooper N, Jackson AL. 2013. Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information. Animal Behaviour 86:685-696. Table 1. doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.06.018
- Inger R, Bennie J, Davies TW, Gaston KJ. 2014. Potential biological and ecological effects of flickering artificial light. PLoS ONE 9(5): e98631. Table 3. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098631
Every value cites its sources (all sources). Data: catalogue-v1, built 2026-09-29. Accuracy notes: how accurate is this?