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Male Lizards Do Push-Ups to Get Attention

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

"Obviously, if nobody is paying attention, performing a territorial display is pointless!" Ord said.

"The lizards add the alerts specifically in conditions when they need to, that is in low light, in visually noisy conditions when the wind is blowing the trees about, and when the individual they are trying to communicate with is at a distance," he explained.

Ord added, "For example, lizards might add alerts when displaying at times earlier in the day when the sun is lower on the horizon and the habitat is dimmer, or if the sun goes behind a cloud, or whenever the wind happens to pick up."

There are at least three reasons why the males don't always add the push-up sequence. The first is it's tiring for them and burns a lot of energy. The second is that, in addition to attracting the attention of other lizards, it could be seen by predators, such as the Puerto Rican lizard-eating cuckoo or the feral mongoose. Thirdly, like the boy who cried wolf, the alert would lose its punch if overused.

The study, funded by the National Geographic Society and the National Science Foundation, is published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Haven Wiley, professor of biology and ecology at the University of North Carolina, also studies animal communication, particularly in birds and frogs.

Wiley told Discovery News that this new report on lizards "is an exciting confirmation of the use of alerting signals in animal communication and of the importance of signal detection theory for understanding the evolution of communication."

He thought the study was "particularly interesting because it showed that adaptations for communication in noise, alerting signals, are used just when you would expect -- in noisy conditions."

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