fewer than 200 left and scientists have only ever one baby in the wild #AnonymousAnimal

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]This animal is so anonymous that when scientists first spotted it in 1986, they thought someone had stained it because it's pink. Not kind of pink, undeniably pink. Because its skin has almost no pigment at all. What you're actually seeing when you look at this animal is its blood right through its skin. It lives on the slopes of Wolf Volcano in Isabella Island in the Galapagos, the only place on Earth it exists. The entire species lives on a single patch of active volcano. We're talking about 25 square kilometers.

[00:00:26]Fewer than 200 left, and scientists have only ever found one of its juveniles in the wild. One. Invasive rats and feral cats are eating the eggs and hatchlings before they ever get the chance to survive. And when they hatch, they aren't pink. They're green. They turn pink as they get older, and nobody fully understands why yet. This species wasn't recognized as its own species until 2009. If you already knew this one, you know why it's so important to share. And if you didn't, well, that's kind of the point.

[00:00:53]This is the Galapagos pink land iguana, Conolophus marthae. Its species name honors Martha Gentile, the stillborn daughter of a scientist who first described it. If you learned something new today, don't forget to share it because together we're making the anonymous animals known. You can't protect what you don't know exist, and knowing is where conservation begins.