University of Sydney boffins have done their sums – and so have the skinks:

When the skinks were a few weeks old and smaller than your pinkie finger, Amiel gave them a simple learning test. Each lizard was placed in a 24°C cage with two hiding places-overturned plastic flower-pot trays with entry holes cut in the sides. But one was a decoy, its opening blocked with Plexiglas. Clever lizards, after bumping the window a few times, should give up on the fake hiding place and go to only the good one, Amiel reasoned.

He tested each lizard 16 times over 4 days, touching its tail with a paintbrush to spook it into hiding. Amiel logged an “error” every time a lizard bumped its nose on the Plexiglas window and logged a successful “escape” if it found the real hiding place in 30 seconds. Lizards from warm nests and cool nests started out making a “relatively equal” number of errors, Amiel says. But the warm-incubated lizards improved, making on average one or two more escapes during the second 2 days than they had during the first 2 days. Cool-incubated lizards showed no such gains.

If it gets really, really hot, the lizards will move into Buckingham Palace with David Icke…

Spotter: Biology Letters via ScienceNOW