YOUR SOOCIETY
116 Australian GeographicR
ESEARCHERS supported by
the Australian Geographic
Society have broken new
ground in the quest to unravel the
strange dancing language of Australia’s
native jacky dragons.
Taking body language to a whole
new level, these dragons use a form of
dance to communicate, with ritualistic
tail flicks, head bobs, arm-waving and
push-ups constituting the words and
sentences of their conversations.
However, researchers do not yet
understand just how these words areheard – or, rather, seen. Dr Shaun
New of the Australian National
University, Canberra, was fascinated
by the movements and eyes of the
lizards and set out to study them.
“After my undergraduate degree
in zoology, I went back home [to the
Pilbara] to rediscover the biodiversity
there,” he says. “There are an
incredible number of endemic species,
so many of which are lizards... I just
wanted to learn more about them.”
This curiosity led Shaun to research
the jacky dragon, a native of south-Lizards that love to bust a move
come under the AGS spotlight.eastern Australia (found from South
Australia to south-east Queensland)
and one of our first native reptiles to
be scientifically described.
His project used computers to plot
the tail flicks in three dimensions and
looked at how the dragons used their
unusual eyes. Shaun found that the
jacky dragons have 323º peripheral
vision, compared with a human’s
paltry 120º.
Although the dragon’s dancing code
has not yet been cracked, Shaun is well
on the way to learning more.Slinky movers.
Scientists hope to
crack the secret
code of the jacky
dragon – an
Australian native
that communicates
by dancing, and has
incredible eyesight.Dance of
the dragon
ECOLOGYMAIN IMAGE: RICHARD PETERS; INSET: © NHPA/PHOTOSHOT /Amphibolurus muricatus