What's that I hear? Photo by Melissa Losos
We think of anoles as visually oriented animals, but they can hear as well. Very little work has investigated their hearing ability, much less how they respond to aural phenomena. In a recent study, Huang et al. reported that anoles alter their behavior depending on what they hear. In particular, they show that A. cristatellus in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, appear to display less after hearing the call of a predatory bird, a kestrel, compared to their response to a non-threatening granivore, the bananaquit. They also report that simulated ecotourists playing the sound of a camera shutter clicking lead to a decrease in display rate compared to controls or the faux tourists taking flash photos. They interpret this finding as indicating that the sound of SLR cameras clicking, but not their flashes, are interpreted as a threat by the anoles. These results are interesting, but cry out for more thorough study, especially given that data were collected by approaching lizards, watching them for 1-2 minutes, presenting the stimulus, and then recording behavior for another minute and comparing rates of behavior from before and after. Moreover, differences in behavior among treatments were only detected in the final 15 seconds of the post-stimulus observation period, where no differences were detected in the first 45 seconds. Bottom line: it would be very interesting to investigate the role of hearing in anole behavior, and this study provides an inkling that there may be interesting work to be done.
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chipojolab
Jonathan’s post brings back old memories and made me search my drawer of unpublished data.
I don’t want to spoil the party, but before you go running to investigate the ability of anoles to respond to the calls of birds, I want to share my two cents. When I was a graduate student, I had the “great” idea that Puerto Rican anoles were responding to the call of one of their main avian predators “El Pájaro Bobo Mayor,” the Puerto Rican Lizard-Cuckoo (Coccyzus vieilloti). At the time, I had spent a considerable amount of time in the field working with herps, and I had made the observation that, in many instances in which I heard the distinctive call of the “Pájaro Bobo,” the anoles seemed to respond to those calls by fleeing. I convinced my advisor that this was a great opportunity to add a second modality to my research on signal evolution and got ready to work. I got a recording with two types of calls of the Pájaro Bobo and headed to field. My first stop was Bosque de Cambalache where both A. cristatellus and the Pájaro Bobo are extremely common. Many hours later, I came to the conclusion that A. cristatellus must just be an outlier. Basically, the anoles didn’t show any signs of responding to the call, but I was positive that others species would. Afterall I had witnessed their response many times before! Thus, I repeated the experiment, at EL Verde, with A. gundlachi … again, no response from the lizards. My “great idea” was a complete disaster, not a big surprise given my track record. Yet I was confused; I have witnessed anoles fleeing when I have heard the distinctive call of the Bobos many times before. Let me cut to chase, there is a small caveat to the story. In some of my trials, live Pájaro Bobos would come to the playback speaker, and as soon as the anoles saw the moving birds, they either froze or fled to the other side of the tree. This was the same behavior that I had previously noted when I heard the call of the birds. What did I learn from all of this, if anything? Do anoles hear the calls of the birds? Most likely yes. Do they care? NO. However, do the anoles detect the motion of the birds? Yes. Do they care? DOUBLE yes. I am positive that in the case of the Pájaro Bobo, what is happening is that although I only became aware of the presence of the bird by its call, the anoles were able to detect their motion (remember, these guys have great vision, including double fovea) way before I saw the bird. Thus they were responding to the motion of the birds, not to their calls, as I had wrongly interpreted from my original observations.
Lisa
I found your blog after searching for “do anoles hear?” I moved to the Piedmont Region of Georgia about 5 years ago and have had much contact with anoles They respond to my voice in a very positive way. They pause and seem to assess the situation and then the more I keep talking they let me get very close to them, within an inch. There heads and eyes move to be consistent with the my voice. If I just move without talking to them they do not stick around but if I move towards them while talking they stay put, with no color change. Very interesting.
linda trask
I have a lot of anoles that have gotten friendly with me. I retired a year ago, and started watching and following them. A male and female partner sit in my door way in the winter when the doors and windows are open(florida). They face the other way with their backs toward me. I had searched the web asking if they can hear, I came up behind them in their blind and dropped a large pot ten feet behind them, on terrazzo floor, sorry they never even flinched. You decide.
Denese
I am a literature major, not a scientist, but I find anoles fascinating. (I live in the Florida panhandle, and we have a lot of them here.) it seems to me that when I’m talking to them, they listen. They stop moving if I stand very still and just talk to them, and they kind of move their heads around so that they seem to be looking into my eyes. Is this behavior I think I’m seeing just fantasy on my part, or can anoles actually discern a friendly voice when they hear one?
Denese Wong
I have a green anole that hangs out on my patio whom I have named Bertie. (I suspect, though, that there is more than one, but as I can’t distinguish between them, they will all just have to be “Bertie.”) Anyway, I often talk to Bertie, and I swear it seems like he’s looking at me and listening to me. At any rate, he doesn’t run away from me unless I try to touch him. Do you think it’s possible that they CAN hear and respond to human speech? Maybe not hear the words as we hear them, but the friendly intent behind the words? I would sure like to think so!
Gianna Coppola
I also like to think that! I’m guessing that Bertie’s seen you so frequently that they recognize you and have decided that you aren’t a threat, so maybe they just like watching you as much as you like watching them.
The way Bertie interacts with you reminds me of my pet anole, Basil. She knows I’m the one who brings food, so when she sees me she gets excited. (even if she’s already had plenty of crickets) She doesn’t react much to anyone else in my family, just me, and like Bertie she doesn’t like being handled.
I suspect that Bertie is the same anole that you keep seeing, since anoles tend to have an area that they stay around and are territorial. They have probably associated someone talking kindly to them as something that isn’t a threat, so I guess you could say that Bertie is learning about human behavior from you. (Is there a website where scientist anoles talk about their observations on humans?!)
It will definitely be interesting to see what else there is to learn about anole behavior! Bertie is lucky to live near such a kind person 🙂
Denese
Thank you so much for your response, Gianna. I enjoyed it very much and learned some helpful things from it, such as that anoles are territorial, so I’m likely seeing the same anole. I’m sorry it has taken me so long to see your comment and reply to it!
Denese Wong
Thank you so much for your reply, Gianna! I read it with great interest. 🙂
Valerie
Read your post! I totally agree with you. I live in Florida also. They’re everywhere in my courtyard. Yes they know you’re talking to them and they don’t like to be touched. I have one now that’s not very mobile but will hop not crawl away. A couple of geckos were bothering it and it just keeps hopping…Sooo weird…I know there’s something wrong with it, but can’t figure out what it’s been hanging around for 2 days, oh and it opens it’s mouth at me so I put drops of water in it’s mouth and it lets me….crazy!
Denese
Wow, that’s amazing about it allowing you to put drops of water in its mouth. That and the “hopping” makes me wonder if it’s ill or injured. I’m glad it has your friendship! 🙂
Steve
I live in Central Florida, and I’ve been fascinated by the green anoles for years. I have a screened in pool and lots of trees and shrubs nearby outside the screen enclosure and a couple small palms inside it. I’ve often wondered if they can hear as they don’t seem to be bothered by noise or respond when talking to them. I use my grill (inside my screened enclosure) fairly frequently, and there are 3 lizards, assuming female, that always seem to sleep on the outside of the screen right by my grill. Ive also watched them and others in the daytime and there are a couple male lizards that I even had to shake my finger at because they were fighting, probably showing their dominance for the females. My voice didn’t seem to matter. When I grill, I used to be worried I would wake the lizards up with the noise, heat, and smoke, but they continue to sleep, even when I have the flashlight shining on them. I was concerned for,the last 3 years or so as I didn’t see any more green anoles in my property (1/4 acre), however there were plenty of the more invasive brown anoles and was worried they killed or scared them off. Several months ago, however, the 10 acre plot of land behind my house was razed and for a new housing development, and the green anoles have returned! I regularly see 5 green anoles (as well as a few brown anoles) around my pool area. Thanks, they are fascinating and beneficial creatures!