[Negator]

How smart they are? i mean crocodile-like - pure instincts and nothing else, or they actually can recognize different humans, act creatively etc? I wll be thankful if someone would provide some stories of their geckos behavior in support of their cleverness\stupidity.

[Ingo]

Depends on how you define smart. Of course they do have a reptilian brain and follow the restrictions of this.
So they will never feel befriended to their owner, play or love handling.
But still they have some amazing abilities. Above all, they learn to know each other personally and devlop a stron pair bond. If a female of a bonded pair dies, the male searxches and calls endlessly for her. Even if a nice replacemtn female is made available. Also they obviously remember "tokay faces" for a long time as I conclude from their behaviour after withdrawal of cagemates and reintroduction of the same sepcimen after several years.
Also they can learn to soem extent to differentiater between "known" and "unknown" humans independent from their respective clothing.

[audio]

i've found that if you pet them when you hold them they eventually find that enjoyable, but they still don't really know how to react. mine would perk it's head up to enforce my petting it, but then later it would go back to running/biting

i'd say it's mostly instinct, and very defensive instinct at that

[Ingo]

Nice case of anthropomorphistic interpretation of stress behaviour.
Tokays are not equipped to "enjoy" petting.
They can learn to tolerate it, but it will stay a stressfull procedure with no benefit at all for the animal.

Ingo

[audio]

.....what???

just politely say i was wrong, damn

['stoph]

The fact both parents will protect their eggs/offspring is interesting as well.

[audio]

i think that'd just be instinctive though, they don't know not to damage the eggs

[invertkurt]

There's no reason why reptiles can't enjoy things. Technically speaking, birds are reptiles and many birds are as smart or smarter than most mammals. Some invertebrates are also incredibly smart. I can't speak on gecko intelligence, but turtles and some lizards may be roughly as smart as many small mammals. Any social animal has some level of 'smarts'. The big problem with discussing animal intelligence is that you can't just ask them. I have personally experienced anecdotal evidence that turtles recognize their owners and consider them part of their social group. I have also seen certain lizards recognize sounds, sights, and smells and connect them to positive experiences.

But as far as a tokay gecko goes... It probably falls somewhere above non-social reptiles and below highly social reptiles. So... Smarter than a worm snake but not as smart as a giant land turtle or an alligator.