Rugosa Tiliqua
Sleepy, but very attentive. Australian lizards manage to smell smoke and escape fires about to launch.
The “Sleepy” lizards (“sleepy”) Tiliqua wrinkledfound in Australia, apparently have an impressive and innate ability to recognize the smell of smoke and escape fires about to launch – a vital adaptation in a country increasingly affected by intense forest fires.
The conclusion is from a new study, from the University of Macquarie, on Wednesday in Biology Letters. The investigation concluded that these reptiles react very clearly to the odor of smoke, not to the sound of fire, according to.
In controlled experiments, investigators exposed the lizards to calls of flames and the smell of smoke, combined and separately. AND Only in the presence of the smell the animals were agitated and tried to escapewhich confirmed that the stimulus acts as a sign of imminent danger.
The phenomenon had already been observed before, but accidentally at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleães, when employees burned the lunch and noticed that the lizards of this species began to stir and try to escape the jails, while other species of nearby reptiles were calm, as if nothing was happening.
The most curious in this accident that came well was that many of the lizards that were on alert had been born in captivity, which leads scientists to believe that the reaction is not learned, but innate: The result of millions of years of evolution in fires prone environments.
Understanding which species are capable of recognizing signs of fire is crucial for conservation strategies, especially as climate change increases the frequency, intensity and unpredictability of fireworks, even ecosystems where they were rare, such as tropical forests. But the adaptation of the lizard, although fantastic, does not mean that wildlife is prepared to face the climate crisis. The authors warn that most species are still extremely vulnerable.
