Efectos de la experiencia sobre el comportamiento depredador de los reptiles

Abstract

An animal’s success as a predator depends on its ability to detect, capture, manipulate, and ingest prey. This ability may vary as a function of factors other than the adaptations present in both predator and prey, such as experience and maturation. While much research has focused on the predatory behavior of lizards, the role of experiential factors on this behavior remains largely unexplored. This is in part due to the widespread misconception that learning has little importance in the life of reptiles in general. However, recent work has disclosed evidence demonstrating that learning plays an important role in many aspects of reptilian behavior. The present contribution reviews recent studies dealing with the effects of experiential factors on the predatory behavior of reptiles and presents results from experiments with lacertid lizards conducted in our laboratory.