While the island's natives often used iguanas as food and funerary offerings in pre-colonial times, man's largest-scale devastation to these animals was as a result of clear-cutting forests to create plantations as well as the introduction of non-native species. Introduced black rats, raccoons, feral dogs, mongoose, hogs, and cats have taken their toll on the population by direct predation, as have the larvae of a moth ("Cactoblastis cactorum"), introduced decades ago to the Caribbean, which are rapidly devastating prickly-pear cacti, an important food source for the iguanas. The Guana Cay population has been reduced to less than 24 individual animals.