It may be thattropical lizardsbe slow, but you are not stupid. In fact, they areable to solve problems as well as birds and mammals, as revealed by an experiment carried out at Duke University (United States) and published inBiology Letters. To prove it, the biologist Manuel Leal confronted lizards of the speciesAnolis evermanni, from Puerto Rico, to various cognitive tasks and discovered that they can learn to solve a problem they have never faced, and also remember it later. The results challenge the widespread idea in the scientific world that reptiles have limited cognitive ability.
In the tests, the lizards faceda wooden block with two holes covered by a lid, one was empty and the other contained a worm. Four lizards, two males and two females, passed the test either by biting off the cap or by pushing it out. What’s more, the lizards solved the problem in three fewer attempts than it took the birds to pull the correct lid and pass the test, Leal says.
The experiment shows, according to those responsible, that when lizards are faced with a situation never before experienced, most of them are capable of devising a way to solve the problem. Hisability to “unlearn” a behaviorAn ability that some mammalian species struggle with is the mark of a cognitively advanced animal, says Jonathan Losos, a Harvard biologist who was not involved in the study.
The results do not necessarily imply that reptiles are smarter than birds. Compared to other lizards, Puerto Rican anoles are better at adapting to diverse habitats and show complex behavior in the wild. The next step, experts say, should be to compare cognitive abilities between different species of reptiles. Previous studies reveal that lizards with larger brains are better at colonizing new areas and exhibit more complex behaviors.
