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Young Australian lizard with blue tongue (Tiliqua scincoides). Credit: Carla Edwards
Young Australian lizards with blue tongue (Tiliqua scincoides) are just as intelligent as adults, the researchers found.
Life is hard for baby blue tongues. From birth, they are alone, without parental support or protection. Adults of this species can reach 600 millimeters in length and enjoy the benefits of a thick scale and a powerful bite, but the young are much smaller and therefore more vulnerable to predation.
And that means that they have to box smartly to survive.
To determine how intelligent blue babies are, researchers Birgit Szabo and Martin Whiting from Australian University Macquarie, as well as colleagues from the Australian National University, the University of New South Wales and St University Andrews in Scotland, have lizards through a series of tasks designed to test their cognitive abilities.
A dozen adults over the age of two participated in the tests, as well as 16 minors born in captivity, all aged 23 to 56 days.
"In all the tests, the young lizards played as well as the adults," Szabo said. "This indicates that young people learn very early in adulthood."
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Young Australian lizards with blue tongue (Tiliqua scincoides). Credit: Martin Whiting
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Australian lizards with blue tongue (Tiliqua scincoides). Credit: Shane Black
Australian lizard scares off predators with its ultra-violet tongue
Birgit Szabo et al., Early juvenile lizards show flexibility in learning and behavior at the adult level, Animal behavior (2019). DOI: 10.1016 / j.anbehav.2019.06.003
Quote:
Australian study reveals that small lizards learn very fast (July 15, 2019)
recovered on July 15, 2019
on https://phys.org/news/2019-07-baby-blue-tongues-born-smart.html
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