Florida is so cold that iguanas are falling from trees by Reuters

(Reuters) – The U.S. National Weather Service in Miami-South Florida has warned people that immobilized iguanas could fall from trees in the region as a result of the unusual cold temperatures throughout the region.

“Iguanas are cold-blooded. When temperatures drop in the 40s (4-9 Celsius) they slow down or move. They may fall from trees, but they are not dead,” the service said on Twitter (NYSE :).

Temperatures in South Florida reached 25 degrees Fahrenheit low on Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service, and high temperatures were expected to remain between the high 50s and lows of 60 on Sunday.

The northeast of the nation was hit by a deadly winter storm on Saturday, prompting several states to declare emergencies and forced more than 1,400 flights to be canceled.

Zoologist Stacey Cohen, a reptile expert at the Palm Beach Zoo in Florida, explained the iguan phenomenon to WPBF television.

“Their bodies basically start to close where they lose their function and so they sleep in the branch trees, and then it gets very cold, they lose that ability to hang and then they fall a lot from the trees,” Cohen said.

Although most reptiles will survive this period of immobilization, Cohen said freezing temperatures were a threat to their survival and noted a cold snap that wiped out large populations in 2010.

“The cold is very, very dangerous for them because it’s a life-threatening thing because they’re from places close to the equator in Central and South America, where it’s always very hot,” he said.

Green iguanas are not native to Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They accidentally entered the ships of doubt as policemen and are considered invasive species. They can weigh up to 17 pounds (7.5 kg) and weigh more than five feet (1.50 meters).

These iguanas are not the first animals to suffer from the cold of winter. Hundreds of thousands of fish raised were killed in a heat shock in a lake in northwestern Greece after a severe snowstorm devastated the country last week.