How Guatemalan beaded lizards navigate and use smell to find their way through mazes

What is it about?

This study explores how Guatemalan beaded lizards navigate their environment and find food in maze experiments. First, we placed food at the end of each arm of an 8-arm maze and investigated whether the lizards would choose arms at random or move in a more strategic, methodical fashion. While all the lizards did make mistakes by returning to arms they already visited and taking circuitous paths, they weren’t randomly searching the maze; they tended to travel to the next adjacent arm, a good strategy to use when you have no cues telling you where to go. Next, we placed lizards between two arms in a T maze, where one arm was baited, and one arm was empty to investigate if lizards could locate food from a distance via smell. It turns out that the lizards were unable to smell the food from a distance, further supporting the belief that they were not getting cues from the distal food rewards. When we added a scent trail (by dragging the reward from the start to its end location), they were successful at following the trail to find food. This research helps us understand how these lizards use their senses in the wild (likely by following scent trails and engaging in directed ambling) to find prey, like bird eggs and small animals, hidden in trees or underground.

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Why is it important?

This study is important because it focuses on a critically endangered species that has not been studied much before. Learning more about how Guatemalan beaded lizards use smell to find food can help us protect them in their natural habitat. It also adds to what we know about how reptiles perceive, think, and navigate their surroundings, which is an understudied area that hasn’t been explored as much as it has for mammals and birds. The findings could inform future conservation efforts and help guide other researchers studying animal cognition and behavior.

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