Personality
From UroWiki
Contents |
Behaviour
Shyness
In the first 1-8 months of owning an uromastyx, people often find that their uromastyx hides a lot and is very shy, often hiding in a cave or other sheltered location for most of the day. This is normal. Uromastyx tend to be shy around new things and may never become completely comfortable with their environment, and may always run to cover when a person is present; while this is not true for all uromastyx, their acclimatisation phrase can take any amount of time.
Aggression
Uromastyx are known to show aggression when stressed or when there is another uromastyx it the cage (territoriality). If this happens, the uromastyx pair should be separated immediately, or the results may be injury, such as bites and nipped-off toes, or sometimes even death.
Playfulness
Although uromastyx are not typically playful, in the sense that common pets such as cats and dogs can be playful, they can often be seen glass dancing. It is unknown whether this activity is a sign of stress, an attempt to escape through the glass, or some version of uromastyx fun.
Emotion
A number of people share the belief that their uromastyx demonstrate affection and emotion and, while true on a very fundamental level, this is not true 'emotion' as we consider it in advanced mammals (cats, dogs, humans, etc). Here's are the major factors governing a lizard's reactions, responses and behaviour.
Intelligence
Generally speaking, uromastyx aren't the sharpest tools in the box, but given their cranial capacity they are fairly intelligent, with a proven capacity to remember terrirory, distinguish owners from strangers, learn patterns, and similar low-level activities. With the ability to remember and learn, they're not necessarily smart but they're not unintelligent either.
Instinct
The vast majority of what uromastyx do both in their daily life, and in exceptional circumstances, is based on instinct. The line blends between instinct and emotion, but most of the very basic emotions have their roots in instinctive responses passed down through the genes - fear, satisfaction, curiosity, stress (particularly seen during acclimatisation), anger, defensiveness, and so on. These are the basic tools that a species uses to improve its place in things and continue long enough to produce a following generation, and is basic Darwinism.
Emotion
While many of the things noted above are connected to emotion, this is at a fairly basic level only. This is where the phrases lizard-brain or reptilian hind-brain originate, when used to describe basic instinctual emotions in humans; however, there is little or no self-awareness involved, and arguably it's this awareness of the instinct which leads it to becoming a full-on emotion. Also, lizards physically lack the complex frontal lobes of the brain that characterise higher forms of life, such as mammals, which allow the processing of emotions as we know them to take place.
Projection
This is the final aspect to the debate: people often say "but I saw my lizard do this or that, which shows it has feelings", or something similar. The technical term for this is anthropomorphism, which in short means applying human values or emotions to a creature or object that doesn't actually have them. Explaining away instinctual behaviour as being meaningful or due to human-centric emotions such as sadness, grief, exasperation, and so on is a good example.
