Cold-blooded culture? Assessing cultural behaviour in reptiles and its potential conservation implications

It is becoming clear that the cognition of a species plays an important role in successful conservation, with cultural processes being a fundamental part of this. However, in contrast to mammals and birds, very little is known about cultural processes (and the social learning that underlies these) in reptiles. Here, we summarize the current state of knowledge, consider why this information is so limited and assess candidate behaviours observed in the wild, which warrant further investigation through the lens of cultural traditions. We then make suggestions for the fundamental next steps necessary to start to address this issue. This includes future experimental work and also consideration of how existing datasets, such as those capturing animal movement or acoustic activity, can be used to assess cultural questions. In addition, we emphasize the important role that engaging key conservation stakeholders, such as zoos, aquaria and ecotourism providers, could play in furthering our understanding of cultural behaviour in this group and the potential conservation implications of this knowledge. Whether there is cultural behaviour in reptiles and the relationship that this has with conservation remain unclear; however, the findings of this review suggest that these are areas worthy of further research.This article is part of the theme issue 'Animal culture: conservation in a changing world'.