Young Australian eastern blue-tongue lizards (Tiliqua scincoides) are every bit as clever as adults, researchers have found. Life is hard for baby blue-tongues. As soon as they are born, they are on their own, with neither parental support nor protection. Adults of the species can grow to 600 millimetres long and enjoy the benefits of thick scales and a powerful bite, but the young are much smaller and thus more vulnerable to predation. And that means they have to box clever if they are to survive. The study, published in the journal Animal Behaviour, is the first to directly compare adult and juvenile flexible learning in reptiles.
