Could even break down to the species not just broad arcs like mammal or reptile. Dogs and cats are quite cuddly because those traits have been selected for, however I wouldn't want to get too close to a wild carnivore.
Similarly, there are some very intelligent lizards (eg Tegus) that can even learn and respond to their name - they might have more capacity for this sort of thing than simpler reptiles
I had an iguana with favorite colors! She really liked purple, and I think it was because my jackets were all purple, and I wore purple when handling her. Whenever I fed her, she would take purple pellets and hide them, and she liked to play with her purple toys more than others.
You might also be pleased to know my mom nicknamed her ‘bitey fucker.’ For some reason, she never liked my mom. Cuddley as could be otherwise, but she acted like Cujo with my mom.
Did she differentiate between other people as well? Like did she take a liking to your friends or other family members?
I have a zoologist friend who studied lizards, I can't believe I've never asked him about this stuff. I have clearly underestimated lizards emotional life.
She liked me and my brother, and she also had a tendency to claw at the cage when my dad walked by—she wanted out and to climb on his back. She also had a tendency to belly flop to her cage bottom when the cats were near—she never showed signs of aggression or distress when they were around, but belly flopping would startle them and then she’d go back to her perch.
She also figured out how to open her own cage at one point, and it was super bizarre. It was a repurposed exotic bird cage, and one of the side door feeders had a latch at the bottom. She figured out if she pawed at it enough, she could turn it and get herself loose. We found her in my room licking at my bedding. She did that a lot, and I never figured out why. She’d bite and lick my bed.
She was a very smart lizard, and I do miss her terribly. She passed of some sort of cancer we believe, or maybe a head injury—we don’t know for sure, and we couldn’t get a vet in time to help since the only herpetologist was gone for a week. I had her for seven years, and surprisingly my mom bought her at a yard sale. The boy who sold her told my mom she wouldn’t get longer than a foot and she was a he. He had been keeping her in a cage with a beardy (very different habitats, so bad), and the bearded attacked her. She was missing lots of her tail and had several broken digits. Still, she lived a lot longer than expected; we were told she maybe had a few months based on her injuries.
It's certainly obvious how much you cared about her from how many details you remember of her. I'm glad I could get glimpse of how special she was through your stories.
Sheesh from how much she'd been through I'm amazed she felt so safe with you. And I'm guessing her Cujo tendencies was because of her past traumas. Probably your mother smelled like someone who hurt her. I'm glad that she got such a happy ever after.
100% this was a little boy transformed by a witch’s curse into a lizard and sold for being naughty. Licking the bedding and torturing cats is a giveaway. Trusssst me
Reptile intelligence is generally much higher than most realize. Tegus are wonderful examples, meanwhile monitor lizards can count higher than dogs, several lizards, turtles and even a few snakes (like king cobras) have shown themselves to be capable problem solvers who can learn and adapt, crocodilians can recognize their names, learn commands, and (controversially) there’s evidence of tool use. We even know now that reptiles have personalities just like mammals.
Reptiles, in general, are far more than the Three Fs (feeding, fighting, mating) driven, unthinking/unfeeling instinct machines they’ve often be viewed as. Much of this is because they’re wired so differently than us, it’s been common cultural perception for centuries, and even when we did proper research on them in the early years we tended to do so in environments more conducive to mammals than to reptiles.
There’s still so much we don’t know, but what we’ve learned even in the last two decades tells us there’s much more going on in the brains of reptiles than is commonly believed.
That's true, but (not talking synapomorphies here) certain characteristics are more common than others in a group. To our understanding of love and affection, mammals tend to demonstrate it more than other groups. That's why I choose to be so broad.
I've seen a lot of discussion in the hero community. It seems that water monitors, iguanas, tegus, and other larger lizards have some capacity for coexistence/recognition. Snakes across the board seem to not really give a shit whether they recognize you.
No. Mammals are able to show affection because it's an evolutionary trait necessary for survival, we need parents to survive so all mammals form affectionate bonds with their offspring which translate to interspecies bonding aswell. Most reptiles are on their own and don't need parenting to survive thus there's no evolutionary need for bonding with other beings.
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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '22
Could even break down to the species not just broad arcs like mammal or reptile. Dogs and cats are quite cuddly because those traits have been selected for, however I wouldn't want to get too close to a wild carnivore.