[Elizabeth Freer]

Brainy lizards pass test for birds

with thanks to Maureen, GU's hexentanz

[Elizabeth Freer]

To Find Tasty Larvae, Lizards Use Their Brains
By Sindyan Bhanoo, NYTimes, 7/20/11

Lizards aren’t the simpletons that some might take them for.
Biologists from Duke University report that lizards have some of the same creative problem-solving abilities that birds and mammals do. Their findings appear in the current issue of Biology Letters.

The researchers, Manuel Leal and Brian Powell, exposed tropical lizards in Puerto Rico known as Anolis evermanni to a blue disc. Beneath the disc was some tasty prey — a freshly killed worm larva.

Four of the six lizards tested were able to get to the worm in one of two ways, either by biting the disc or by sticking their snouts underneath it and prying it off.

“Most people believed their behavior may be more robotic or not as flexible,” said Dr. Leal, the study’s lead author. But the lizards were creative, he said, using skills “which have no real ecological relevance.”
Lizards in the wild capture moving prey by running up and down trees, Dr. Leal said.
He and Mr. Powell further complicated the experiment by placing a worm under a blue disc with a yellow border, but none under the plain blue disc.

The lizards initially looked under only the blue disc, where they expected the worm to be.
But eventually, two clever lizards began looking under the blue and yellow disc, and successfully uncovered worms.

Dr. Leal said he hoped the study would lead to more investigations into the cognitive abilities of reptiles.

“If we only study birds and mammals, we’re only going to learn from those groups,” he said. “This is one more distinct group we need to learn about.”
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