JULY 15,
2019
Young
Australian eastern blue-tongue lizards (Tiliqua scincoides) are every
bit as clever as adults, researchers have found.
Life is hard
for baby blue-tongues. As soon as they are born, they are on their own, with
neither parental support nor protection. Adults of the species can grow to 600
millimetres long and enjoy the benefits of thick scales and a powerful bite,
but the young are much smaller and thus more vulnerable to predation.
And that
means they have to box clever if they are to survive.
To establish
just how smart baby blueys are, researchers Birgit Szabo and Martin Whiting
from Australia's Macquarie University, together with colleagues from the
Australian National University, the University of New South Wales, and St
Andrews University in Scotland, put wild-caught adult and juvenile lizards through a series of tasks designed to test their cognitive abilities.
A dozen
adults, all over two years old, took part in the tests, along with 16 captive-born
juveniles, all aged between 23 and 56 days.
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