The Social Lives of Reptiles

Baltimore 2021, geb., 440 Seiten, 26 Farbabb., 24 sw.-Abb. Covering diverse species from garter snakes to Komodo dragons, this book delves into the evolutionary origins and fascinating details of the mysterious social lives of reptiles. Reptiles have been too often dismissed as dull animals with tiny brains and simple, "asocial" lives. In reality, reptiles engage in a remarkable diversity of complex social behaviour. They can live in families; communicate with one another while still in the egg; and hunt, feed, migrate, court, mate, nest, and hatch in groups. In this book, J. Sean Doody, Vladimir Dinets, and Gordon M. Burghardt—three of the world's leading experts on reptiles—bring together a wave of new research with a synthesis of classic studies to produce the only authoritative look at the social behaviours of the most provocative animals on the plan-et. The book covers turtles, lizards, snakes, crocodilians, and the enigmatic tuatara. Enhanced with dozens of images, it takes readers through a myriad of social interactions, tendencies, and intimacies ranging from fierce territorial battles to delicate paternal care and from promiscuous pairings to monogamous partnerships. This unique text. The book explains why reptiles have been neglected as subjects of social behaviour studies, it provides numerous examples across all major reptilian groups that overturn the false paradigm of "solitary" reptiles and explores the sensory, genetic, physiological, life history, and other factors underlying social behaviour in reptiles. Furthermore it presents the case that evolutionary "experiments" found among reptiles offer unparalleled opportunities for understanding how and why social behaviour evolves in an-imals and it identifies new and developing areas of research helping to reshape our view of rep-tiles.