New Delhi, April 22: As a six-year-old child, Maria Thaker chased garden lizards to hold them in her hands, a game she recalls as fun and challenging. That fascination has endured over the years and now drawn her into discovering how India's cities are changing lizard behaviour.
Thaker, now an ecologist at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and her students have found that city lizards appear less afraid of humans, can escape potential predators faster, and yet are slower when "talking" to each other than rural lizards.