Fear of the new? Geckos hesitate to attack novel prey, feed near objects and enter a novel space

Abstract

Neophobia, the fear of novelty, is an ecologically important response which enables animals to avoid potentially harmful situations. Neophobia is a cognitive process by which individuals distinguish novelty from familiarity. In this study, we aimed to quantify this cognitive process in captive tokay geckos (Gekko gecko) across three contexts: when encountering novel prey, foraging near novel objects and entering a novel space. We also investigated individual consistency across trials using different novel stimuli, and correlation of individual responses across the three contexts. We found that geckos hesitate to attack novel prey and prey close to objects (familiar and novel). Geckos hesitated the most when entering novel space. Repeatability of behaviour within and across contexts was low (R = 0.101–0.190) indicating that neophobia might not be expressed similarly across contexts. The strength of a neophobic response can indicate how anxious or curious an individual is. This test has great potential to help answer questions about how captivity, enrichment, rearing environment and cognition affect fear responses in different contexts in lizards. By studying reptiles, we can better understand the universality of what is known about the causes leading to difference in neophobia across individuals and species.

The influence of partner presence and association strength on neophobia in tokay geckos

“…Food neophobia increased during pair housing but rather than social context, prey type is more likely to explain this change. Our follow-up study confirmed the results obtained from the first study [26].…”

“…We followed the testing procedure developed in our previous study [26] but describe it here in brief. Geckos were tested in their home enclosures to reduce stress of handling [30] and ensure strong neophobic responses [1,13].…”

“…Similar to our first study [26], we investigated if neophobia occurred in the food, object and space neophobia test and if behaviour was repeatable. To this end, we ran a Bayesian GLMM for each test with the log-transformed latency as the response variable on the data of all 22 individuals.…”

“…Furthermore, we found that geckos showed the strongest responses towards novel space and demonstrated consistent individual differences in object neophobia. During our first study [26], all geckos were housed singly. Tokay geckos, however, are a facultative social lizard species that shows extended pair association, parental care and temporary family groups, although hatchlings are independent immediately after hatching [27].…”

“…Similar to other social species [15][16][17][18][19][20][23][24][25], we hypothesised that geckos might change their neophobic responses depending on the social context they experience during testing. Consequently, we followed up on our first study [26] by retesting the same individuals after being housed in pairs for three months. We predicted that, if a conspecific acted as a social buffer then neophobia would decrease during pair housing compared to single housing.…”