The author of Green Iguana—The Ultimate Owner's Manual, James W. Hatfield, was in Palm Springs, CA on vacation with his wife when he got a call on his cell phone from a woman (Brooke) living in Hollywood, CA. Brooke and her husband have a film company based in Australia. For a project, Brooke was finding experts on specific animals and interviewing those people on video to use for the project. Her husband, also part of the the company, was the cinematographer. Brooke gathered bits and pieces of film and quotes from the experts and put it together for an entertaining show for Netflix called "72 Dangerous Animals: Latin America."

Brooke wanted Jim Hatfield to be the expert on green iguanas for the show. She told Jim on the phone that she could come to Palm Springs and do the interview and filming. Jim said no, because he and his wife were on vacation for the first time in 5 years and he didn't want that special time wrecked. Brooke said that they could fly up to Oregon in a couple of weeks and do the filming at Jim's house. Jim said he still wasn't interested. Brooke said it would be an easy and fun day...and that she had checked around and found that Jim was considered the expert on green iguanas not just because he had the most accurate iguana book, but also because of all of the years he did research in the jungles of Latin America on the land, in the trees and in water with green iguanas-plus years of gathering information on green iguanas from scientists and experts like the Director of CRES (Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species) at the San Diego Zoo.

Long story short, Brook and her husband came out to Ashland, Oregon, and filmed and asked questions. Jim gave them some still photos and other contacts for the video. All in all everyone had a great time, and Jim was happy he did the video. As the name implies, there are "72 Dangerous Animals" in this Netflix show, but only about 5 minutes are devoted to green iguanas. Take a look, the whole show has this wonderful array of experts on the other 71 dangerous animals, and the whole show is beautifully produced and a great experience to watch.

Jim gets his 5 minutes of fame. Here is how you can see the section of Jim talking about green iguanas on Netflix: It is Episode #2 of "72 Dangerous Animals: Latin America" at about 31 minutes into this episode. They were pretty accurate with their reporting except for the mention of iguanas' "signature circles on their lower mouth [that are] salt glands used for excreting bodily saline fluids". Iguanas' salt glands are in the nose cavity, and those "signature circles" are simply large scales, officially called subtympatic scales-and they're located on the jowls, not the "lower mouth". But other than that one miss, this segment on green iguanas is highly informative and entertaining.