|
||||
|
By Birgit Szabo As children we have much to learn after we are born. We learn to walk, to talk, to develop our social skills, and when we start school we learn how to read, write and do maths. Humans, and many other animals, are considered altricial, meaning that juveniles need to be taken . . . → Read More: Blue-tongue lizards are born smart, at least as smart as their parents!  Comments are closed  Bluetongue lizard, Bluetongue skink, Cognition  Birgit Szabo, blue-tongue skink, bluey, cognition, learning, Lizard Lab, precocial, The Lizard Lab Check out our new paper on social learning in the Italian wall lizard, Podarcis sicula. This work formed part of Isabel Damas’ PhD thesis, and it was a huge effort! The question of what makes an invasive species successful compared to other species, that may fail to gain a foothold in a new location, . . . → Read More: Hot off the press! An invasive lizard species can learn from other species Comments are closed Cognition, Conservation, Podarcis, Publications cognition, heterospecific learning, Isabel Damas, Italian wall lizard, learning, lizard, Lizard Lab, Podarcis bocagei, Podarcis sicula, social learning, The Lizard Lab Note from Martin Whiting: This blog posts details a chapter of Birgit Szabo’s PhD recently published in Animal Behaviour and represents an enormous amount of work. Birgit did a 9-month cognition experiment, which could be the longest lizard cognition experiment thus far conducted. (Let us know if it isn’t!) The work is in collaboration . . . → Read More: What tree skinks know about change: A story in colour and shape Comments are closed Cognition, Egernia, Publications, Sociality Birgit Szabo, cognition, Egernia striolata, intelligence, set shifting, social intelligence, sub-problem solving, tree skink Note: this blog post is republished from Fonti’s web site Dominant individuals tend to have greater monopoly over food and mates and therefore have more offspring compared to subordinate individuals. Are these successes attributed to greater cognitive ability? Or are dominant individuals just better at freeloading from their clever subordinate counterparts? We investigated . . . → Read More: Brains and Brawn: dominant lizards are better learners too! Take a listen to Julia Riley discussing our latest publication on the influence of social environment on learning in tree skinks (Egernia striolata). The interview was with Marc Fennell on ABC radio. This work, led by Julia, has been published in Animal Cognition: Riley, JL., Noble, DWA., Byrne, RW., Whiting, MJ. 2016. Does social . . . → Read More: Julia Riley interviewed on ABC radio! Comments are closed Cognition, Tree skink project cognition, Egernia striolata, Julia Riley, learning, The Lizard Lab, tree skink By Julia Riley A family-living lizard’s ability to navigate through a complex maze is not linked to how they were raised We have found that the learning ability of the Tree Skink, a lizard that lives with family, is not linked to growing up with others. These lizards were . . . → Read More: Skinks and Ladders: A family-living lizard’s learning ability is not affected by their home environment Comments are closed Cognition, Egernia, Herpetology, Publications, Social behaviour, Tree skink project cognition, Egernia striolata, Julia Riley, lizard, Lizard Lab, The Lizard Lab, tree skink Followers of the Lizard Lab blog will have read previous reports about relatively rapid learning in lizards. In those studies we typically focused on males or avoided drawing comparisons between the sexes because either the sample size was limited or the focus of the study was different. In our latest paper we decided the . . . → Read More: Sex, boldness and learning in a lizard The Kimberley in Western Australia is a vast expanse of wilderness, famous for its pristine gorges and unique fauna. It’s also home to the highest species richness of goannas—up to 10 are sympatric in some areas. Sean Doody (University of Tennessee and Newcastle), Simon Clulow (University of Newcastle) and Colin McHenry (Monash University) have . . . → Read More: Dispatches from the field: Australian Geographic expedition to the Kimberley, WA 3 comments - (Comments are closed) Cane toad cognition, Cane toads, Lab news, Lizard Lab adventures Australian Geographic, Cane toad, cognition, El Questro Wilderness Park, Kimberley, Rhinella marina For anyone interested in comparative cognition, these are exciting times and 2012 has been a good year for lizards! Manuel Leal and Robert Powell’s study of Anolis cognition demonstrated that lizards are capable of behavioural flexibility. (Behavioural flexibility, a key feature of advanced cognition, is the ability to solve a novel problem, or develop . . . → Read More: Hot off the press! “Learning outdoors: male lizards show flexible spatial learning under semi-natural conditions” Comments are closed Cognition, Lab news, Water skink project Biology Letters, cognition, Daniel Noble, eastern water skink, Eulamprus quoyii, lizard, Lizard Lab, spatial cognition, The Lizard Lab Read an account of our recent work on mole-rat spatial cognition by Dani Cooper of ABC science. This work was carried out by Lydia du Toit while she she was on a postdoc with Martin. Mole-rats varied life boosts the brain — ABC Science Natal mole-rat (Cryptomys hottentotus natalensis). Photo © Jenny Jarvis. . . . → Read More: Mole-rats varied life boosts the brain — ABC Science Comments are closed Behaviour, Cognition, Lab news, Science news cognition, Cryptomys hottentotus natalensis, Lydia du Toit, mole-rat, Natal mole-rat, spatial cognition |
     |
|||
|
Copyright © 2019 The Lizard Lab - All Rights Reserved |
||||
