social cognition in a non-social reptile? very interesting reading, but not very surprising as the owner of a redfoot!
article link below:
click me
Reptile & Amphibian Forums
Welcome to kingsnake.com's message board system. Here you may share and discuss information with others about your favorite reptile and amphibian related topics such as care and feeding, caging requirements, permits and licenses, and more. Launched in 1997, the kingsnake.com message board system is one of the oldest and largest systems on the internet.
"Gaze-Following in Red-Footed Tortoises"
unchikun
Nov 15, 2010 07:57 PM
Replies (3)
unchikun
Nov 15, 2010 08:05 PM
found a couple of other studies recently done on the intelligence of red-footed tortoises.
"Social learning in a non-social reptile (Geochelone carbonaria)," by the same folks at the university of vienna who did the gaze-following study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20356886
"Visual and response-based navigation in the tortoise (Geochelone carbonaria)" from the university of york:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19466467
in case anyoen wants to do any further reading.
domalle
Nov 22, 2010 01:45 PM
agreed -
and a review of the study in Discover
referred to them as "antisocial"!
unchikun
Nov 23, 2010 01:48 PM
sciencenow also referred to them as "antisocial," which bugs me, because you'd think that writers for scientific publications would know the difference between antisocial and asocial... but i digress! i just think that the whole idea of redefining what classifies as "social" (at least in a cognitive sense), or else showing that certain cognitive abilities/intelligence types are not strictly limited to "higher mammals," is really exciting.
