I am an amateur herpetologist on a mission: I’ve looked online in rec.pets.herp, tried various search engines to no avail, and asked people on various email lists that I subscribe to, all without finding a good answer.
My Question: How smart are the reptiles typically kept as pets? (By this I mean your “average” tortoise, turtle, snake, and/or lizard.)
I know that in comparison to the average cat or dog, the reptile would come up short. And they would probably flunk the standard maze test that would bore a rat to death.
But in their own way, they can appear to be pretty smart, in terms of getting out of their enclosures, finding food or mates, and learning how to interact with humans. There are a whole lot of anecdotal stories, but no real scientific studies that I can find. So has anyone here ever run across a study that they can point me toward?
Well, snakes are “smart” enough to catch mice, shed their skins, and do all the things they need to do to survive.
Beyond that, they’re utterly incapable of learning and they’re not much good at problem solving. They’re not even big on recognition (a pet snake doesn’t know or recognize its owner).
My pet 4 foot iguana is sitting with me here now. He does a pretty good dog imitation but I am pretty sure that he understands me at a deeper level than a dog ever would. However, he is in love with my wife and goes crazy whenever she gets home. He also gets mad and pounds on the side of his (very large) cage whenever we have sex. He watches her closely with gratification on his face whenever she gets dressed in the morning. I have never seen this behavior in an animal before.
Actually, I have heard of this behaviour in iguanas – and in particular, it seems to happen most often with male iguanas and female owners.
The thinking is that the iguana thinks of her as his mate, and thinks of you as competition! Thus, it might pay to be careful around him, you know? Igs are capable of inflicting major damage when ticked off…
I keep several different species of reptiles myself, and all of them recognize me, and will come up to me to see if I have food for them. Some of them will also accept a head rubbing. It’s hard not to think there’s some intelligence there, but I’m sure that I’m anthropomorphizing them quite a bit. I just wonder how much is real and how much is my imagination.
Now, call me paranoid, but I’d be leery of letting that iguana alone with your wife when you leave. But why in the world would it even mimic those responses? Does your wife feed it, or care for it in other ways? Most animal actions are based on food when humans are involved. Even the affectionate dog, with all its pack instincts, learns fastest when treats are involved. Why a lizard would care one way or another about a person is beyond me.
Getting out of the hijack, lizards might be as intelligent as dogs, but in different ways. After all, a dog is a warm-blooded mammal that was evolved to function in a strict pack structure and hunt four-legged herbivores larger than itself. An iguana is a cold-blooded lizard that evolved to function in a solitary role and hunt insects and arachnids smaller than itself. That would lend itself to divergent intelligences.
I was serious in my post. I take care of him, I feed him, but he LOVES her. It gets a little spooky at times. However, I have handled him since he was a baby so that even when he gets over six feet, I think that I can keep him under control. He is very smart and affectionate to me as long as she is not around.
I don’t want to nit-pick but iguanas are primarily vegetarians. They eat some insects but over 90% of their diet should be green leafy vegetables. Attilla eats only specialty salad mixes from premium food stores. Talk about an exotic pet.
A: Sufficiently intelligent to have once ruled the earth for a lot longer than we’ve ever been around on it. Conciousness in a wonderful thing and all that, but not quite as essential to survival as we might tend to think.
Provided, of course, that one acceepts the notion that dinosaurs are/were reptiles. Prior to that period, the reptiles held their own in the competition, but hardly “ruled the world” in any worthwhile sense.
