Long dismissed as unintelligent, reptiles are emerging as cognitively and emotionally complex animals. — FEDERICO RIOS/The New York Times
Should you meet a turtle basking on a log in the sun, you might reasonably conclude that the turtle is in a good mood.
Granted, there has been little scientific evidence that reptiles experience such emotional richness – until now, at least.
Researchers in England identified what they describe as “mood states” – emotional experiences that are more than momentary – in red-footed tortoises by administering cleverly designed tests that use responses to ambiguity as windows into the psyche.
The results of the study, published in the journal Animal Cognition, could apply to many more reptiles and have profound implications for how people treat them.
“There was an acceptance that reptiles could do these short-term emotions,” said Oliver Burman, who studies animal behaviour at the University of Lincoln in England and is an author of the paper.
“They could respond to positive things and unpleasant things. But the long-term mood states are really important.” As for why it took so long to show this in reptiles, Burman said, “maybe we just haven’t asked them correctly.”
Reptiles have a long-standing reputation as being unintelligent.
Writing in 1892, Charles Henry Turner, the pioneering comparative psychologist, described reptiles as “intellectual dwarfs.”
Eight decades later, in 1973, prominent scientists were referring to them as “reflex machines” and (in a paper titled “The Evolutionary Advantages of Being Stupid”) as possessing “a very small brain which does not function vigorously.”
Burman is among the scientists responsible for what some have called a “reptilian renaissance.” An array of findings – tortoises learning from one another, snakes with social networks, crocodiles displaying complex communication – indicate that reptiles are no less brainy than mammals and birds.
An iguana sitting on branches in a terrarium. Many stressed reptiles shut down and stop moving, but because people don’t understand what is happening, they ‘think that it’s normal,’ says Wilkinson.
Buffered by good mood
But do they have moods?
Burman and his colleagues approached that question using what is known as a cognitive bias test. These operate on a principle common to many animal minds, human and nonhuman alike: Individuals in a good mood are more optimistic about uncertain outcomes, whereas those in a bad mood tend to be pessimistic.
The researchers placed each of 15 tortoises inside an enclosure with two empty bowls set on the floor.
When a tortoise approached one of the bowls, it received a helping of arugula, a favorite treat. When it approached the other bowl, it received nothing.
After the tortoises had learned to associate each location with a reward, or the lack thereof, the researchers placed three additional bowls at intermediate points between the original bowls.
The speed, relatively speaking, with which a tortoise investigated these new, ambiguously placed bowls served as a proxy for its emotional state.
Then, over a period of two weeks, the researchers presented each tortoise with an unfamiliar object – a coaster made of beads – and put the tortoise in an enclosure with walls and a floor covered in patterns it had not previously encountered.
Such novelties are known to make tortoises anxious, but the tortoises that were most optimistic in the earlier test showed the least anxiety in this one. (A tortoise extends its head when it is relaxed; the farther the extension, the less anxious it is likely to be.) They appeared to be buffered by their good moods.
“These results significantly extend contemporary knowledge of the capacity for reptiles to experience mood states,” Bur-man and his colleagues wrote in the paper.
They noted that the results echoed those of a similarly designed 2010 study on dogs experiencing separation anxiety.
How broadly can the new findings be extrapolated to other reptiles?
“We can’t say for sure, but evidence of a capacity within the group tells us that it can exist,” said Anna Wilkinson, a reptile cognition specialist at the University of Lincoln and an author of the study. “We need to test other groups of reptiles.”
Snakes in particular are commonly kept in too-small enclosures with little enrichment. — Photos: Freepik
Better welfare for captive reptiles
On a Facebook group devoted to reptiles and amphibians, some underwhelmed members remarked that scientists had merely discovered what reptile owners already knew.
But Gordon Burghardt, a comparative psychologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and pioneer in the study of reptile intelligence, noted the value of empirical demonstration. “Experimental evidence is important,” said Burghardt, who was not involved in the study.
Asked whether he thought that many and perhaps even all reptiles experienced moods, Burghardt replied, “Certainly.”
For Burman and Wilkinson, the most important implication of their finding was the urgency it gave to undersstanding the welfare of captive reptiles. Their capacity for moods, Burman said, underscores how they may experience not only momentary discomforts or pleasures, but also long-term suffering or satisfaction.
Captive reptile welfare is notoriously poor.
Many reptiles are kept in inappropriate conditions, such as close confinement, and without enrichment. Often they are misleadingly advertised as easy-to-keep pets to people who do not understand their physical and psychological needs and who may lack the ability to interpret their behaviours.
“The tendency to normalise poor welfare – especially among casual reptile owners – appears to be widespread in both Europe and North America,” Manuel Magalhaes-Sant’Ana and Alexandre Azevedo, veterinary scientists at the University of Lisbon in Portugal, said in an email. They described the new findings as “a turning point” in taking reptile welfare seriously.
“We’re relatively good at reading mammals,” Wilkinson said. “We look at facial expressions. We look at parts of the body that we have an understanding for.”
But with reptiles, “you can’t read them in the same way.”
Whereas dogs in distress might “eat a sofa,” she said, many reptiles simply shut down and stop moving, but because people don’t understand what is happening, they “think that it’s normal.”
Snakes in particular are commonly kept in too-small enclosures with little enrichment.
In future research, Wilkinson said, “what we would love to do is to look at what happens if you give a snake a playground.” – ©2025 The New York Times Company
