Every Day Is Special: May 30

May 30 – Anguilla Day

Posted on May 30, 2019

Parades and races are popular patriotic activities, it seems - and today it's the British overseas territory of Anguilla that's parade-marching and music-making and speed-sailing.

Anguilla is an island in the Caribbean, and one of the popular Anguilla Day activities is a Round-the-Island Boat Race.

The island of Anguilla, which is about 16 miles (26 km) long and 3 miles (almost 5 km) wide (at its widest point), is the major part of the Anguilla overseas territory, but there are also smaller islands and teeny cays included in the territory. None of these small isles are inhabited.

The name Anguilla means "eel" and was probably given to the island by Christopher Columbus. The other names for the island include Snake Island. The island is supposed to be shaped a bit like a snake - but I'm not sure I see the resemblance.

Speaking of snakes, I read about another reptile that is important in Anguilla: iguanas.

The species of iguana that is native to Anguilla is the Lesser Antilles iguana. It is found on six Caribbean islands and nowhere else in the world - and it is critically endangered.

One reason that the Lesser Antilles iguana is endangered is that a closely related species, the green iguana, arrived on the island in the late 1990s atop some logs that had been uprooted and flung into the ocean by a hurricane.

I assumed that the green iguana was out-competing the Lesser Antilles iguana, and I was right - but apparently the bigger threat is that the two species are mating and interbreeding. So...they are making a new species? Or sub-species?

The guideline that we often think of as a definition of a species is that members of one species almost never mate with members of another species...and if they do, the resulting baby creature is sterile and can't grow up and have babies of its own.

But there are lots of examples of creatures of different (but closely related) species mating and having viable offspring. In simpler terms, sometimes a creature of Species X really does mate with a creature of Species Y, and the baby (which we will call Z) really can grow up and mate with Xs, Ys, or other Zs, and have babies...

And so evolution - the slow and gradual change in populations of living things, and the development of new species of living things - marches on...

By the way, Anguilla is of course known for its glorious beaches...