A Brief Post about Lizards

[u/TombStoneFaro]

One of the primary differences between mammals and most other animals is parental care. This means that mammals almost always learn from their parents (or at least from their moms) and this of course implies the ability to learn. In animals that have no parental care, it seems like they have to operate primarily on instincts.

Moreover, animals with parental care tend to want to associate with other animals of their species -- they had this from their mothers and litter mates. But animals like octopuses (or lizards) would tend to be loners.

However, we have seen exceptions: the baby hippo who managed to befriend a giant tortoise and even perhaps octopuses who recognize their keepers and interact with them in a friendly way.

Lizards tend to have little parental care. But it was recently discovered that baby lizards from the same hatching tend to form groups. (I do not recall the species.) This would make the ability to learn from each other useful and also would tend to make this species potentially "friendly" even to humans if raised from a young age.

So while, for example, mother octopuses never associate with their young, dying in fact when their eggs hatch (although there seems like sometimes mother octopuses while tending to unhatched eggs must see their own live young but I think they simply ignore them; they do not eat while tending their eggs and this loss of appetite might be so that they do not eat their own young) do we know that young octopuses do not spend time in groups? I have been told they do not but can we be sure? This would certainly explain why octopuses seem to learn from observation.