Are reptiles intelligent? Can they learn? Amazing Reptile Fact 2.

Dr Anna Wilkinson with a bearded dragon. A still from Ingenious Animals
Available on BBC IPlayer till Sept 28 2016.

About 20 years ago I asked a so-called reptile expert whether snakes could think? "No," he replied. "They have a primitive brain."
"How do they find their way about?" I asked him.
"Instinct. Pure instinct." he replied.
Reptiles have a reputation for being stupid animals - " a lower form of life," more "primitive" than mammals, just a bundle of instincts, without feelings, unable to learn.
Wrong.
This slur on reptile intelligence came about for several reasons. One was the rather odd idea we have of the role of intelligence in evolution - a kind of tree of life with clever man right at the top, and all the other animals below, getting stupider the lower they appear. Like an intelligence class system - man as master of the world, animals as peasants or serfs. It's a self-important human idea. Even a mollusc, the octopus, can be pretty bright and may even be able to use tools, something we used to think only humans did. And although reptiles preceded mammals, they have been evolving since then. So even if they started off dumb in the days of the dinosaur (and we have no reason to suppose this) they have been evolving since then.
Work at Lincoln University, under the direction of Dr Anna Wilkinson, has shown that tortoises  can navigate their way through mazes. They can even follow the gaze of a fellow tortoise to find out where it is looking. Lizards can learn whether a food reward is on the left or the right. Tortoises can recognise the difference between a picture of food or the picture of a nonfood object.
Even more extraordinary is that a bearded dragon can learn from watching another bearded dragon tackle a problem. From a video, no less. This was demonstrated in a BBC programme, Ingenious Animals, in which one of Dr Wilkinson's lizards watched a video of another lizard pushing aside a glass door to get at some meal worms. Before he saw the video, he spent a long time trying to learn how to do this. Once he had seen the video, he got the idea far more quickly.
So.... reptiles aren't stupid.

Click here to watch the bearded dragon experiment on BBC until September 28 2016. The bearded dragon part is about two thirds of the way through.

Wilkinson, A.  & Huber, L., (2012), Cold-Blooded Cognition: Reptilian Cognitive Abilities,’ in eds Vonk, J. & Shackleford, T. K. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Evolutionary Psychology, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, 129-143.