Do not use wood shavings, corn-cob bedding, sand, or crushed walnut shells in iguana enclosures. The other substrates are not digestible and can cause severe intestinal blockage if ingested. Iguanas are from tropical areas, and require rather high relative humidity to shed properly. More than one home fire has been started by a wily free roaming iguana that knocked over it's heat lamp. Free roaming iguanas also mean free roaming salmonella bacteria, which should be avoided at all costs.
Unsupervised iguanas can also damage furniture, wiring, and carpet.
Iguanas are also especially adept at cramming themselves into the most unlikely, and hard to reach, spaces. This can cause severe stress to both the animal and the owner when extraction is attempted. Proper Heating It is critically important that iguanas receive proper heating. Reptiles are ectothermic, meaning that they do not manufacture their own body heat. Reptiles must provide themselves with heating or cooling from their environments, this is done by a mechanism called thermoregulation.