If men were as much men as lizards are lizards
they'd be worth looking at. - D. H. Lawrence
I.
I suppose the cognitive ability of mammals and birds is now pretty much an established fact; that is to say, human beings have finally conceded that they are not the only creatures that possess minds and know how to think and use language, etc.
Unfortunately, however, there's still lingering prejudice when it comes to other classes of animal - reptiles, for example, are still not accorded the respect they deserve and are generally considered less intelligent even than certain species of fish ...!
I'm sure it's not only the scalies and herpetophiles out there who are offended by the injustice of this ...
II.
It's true, of course, that reptile brains are (relative to their body mass) significantly smaller than our own. But, be that as it may, reptiles are far from mindless - and certainly not as stupid as some people like to believe. It's worth recalling that dinosaurs roamed the earth for around 175 million years - which is a lot longer than the 100,000 years modern humans have clocked up (or are ever likely to clock up).
Larger lizards and crocodiles regularly exhibit complex behaviour, including cooperation; Komodo dragons are known to engage in play; turtles are also fun and sociable and some species are better even than white rats in learning to navigate their way round mazes. D. H. Lawrence, who famously immortalised a number of tortoises in his poetry, would be delighted to know that they are capable of learning via operant conditioning and that they are able to retain learned behaviours thanks to excellent long-term memories.
We know these things because after spending years putting mammals, birds, and fish through their paces, researchers are finally giving reptiles the opportunity to show us what they can do via tests specifically designed for them.
Now that scientists have got better at designing reptile-friendly experiments, they've been pretty astonished by the results: reptiles, it seems, are not just good-looking, they're pretty savvy after all - and certainly more than living machines driven by instinct alone; they possess what is known as behavioral flexibility (i.e., the ability to alter behaviour as external circumstances change).
Now that scientists have got better at designing reptile-friendly experiments, they've been pretty astonished by the results: reptiles, it seems, are not just good-looking, they're pretty savvy after all - and certainly more than living machines driven by instinct alone; they possess what is known as behavioral flexibility (i.e., the ability to alter behaviour as external circumstances change).
Although the field of reptile cognition is still in its infancy, it's already clear that intelligence is more widely distributed across the animal kingdom than previously realised - and so human exceptionalism takes another poke in the eye!
