Chile Pepper Fun Fact - Lizards, Turtles and Snakes Oh My!
Do Reptiles Eat Chili Peppers? You bet ya
Like birds, reptiles are also able to ingest capsaicin without any issues:
Lizards ~
Most types of lizards, such as the bearded dragon and iguanas, can eat chili peppers. They seem to enjoy them, too. However, eating too many chili peppers might cause them to have an upset stomach.
If you have a pet lizard, you can try out milder peppers like Jalapeños. These contain less capsaicin than the spicier Habanero or Scotch bonnets. You might want to remove the ribs and seeds from the Jalapeños before you give them to your pet lizard, since they contain the most heat.
Turtles~
Many turtle keepers avoid feeding their pets spicy chili peppers for fear that they might harm them. They instead go for bell peppers which do not contain capsaicin.
However, this fear is unfounded as turtles can eat spicy chili peppers, too. Just like birds, turtles do not have pain receptors and can consume the peppers without feeling the burning heat or suffering adverse effects.
Snakes~
All snakes are carnivores, so they don’t care much for plants. They are more interested in rabbits, mice, rats, insects, other reptiles, and birds. Despite their preferred diet, snakes have a significant impact on plant life in a given habitat and can help or severely hamper plant life since they affect seed dispersal. While they may not snack on peppers themselves, they do consume other animals and birds that do.
These reptiles swallow their food whole, so if a snake swallows a bird that had eaten chili peppers, the seeds can survive the journey through the snake’s digestive tract. At times, some of these seeds even start germinating while still inside the snake’s colon. This means that the pepper plant, more often than not, starts growing as soon as they get deposited on the ground.
You might think that the snakes would actually lead to more chili pepper plants on the island, as there would be fewer birds eating the pepper fruits. However, birds are also great pollinators, since they usually poop out the pepper seeds in new locations, thus helping in spreading them. These peppers are often spicier than the ones raised on regular farms. Guam’s pepper plants have been decimated due to the snakes’ impact on the local bird populations.