Lizards do push-ups primarily to communicate. These bobbing displays serve as visual signals to rival males, potential mates, and even predators. While it looks like a tiny workout routine, each push-up carries specific information about the lizard’s strength, status, and intentions.
Territorial Defense
The most common reason a lizard does push-ups is to announce ownership of its territory. Males perch on rocks, fence posts, or tree trunks and pump their bodies up and down to broadcast a simple message: this spot is taken. The display makes the lizard more visible from a distance and signals dominance to any rival who might be watching. If a second male is nearby, both lizards often begin doing push-ups simultaneously, sizing each other up before deciding whether to escalate to a physical fight or back down.
Research on anole lizards found that display intensity during initial encounters reliably predicts which animal will become dominant. In paired trials, the lizard that performed more frequent push-ups and sustained longer displays became the dominant member in 11 out of 12 pairings. The push-ups essentially function as an honest advertisement of physical condition. A weak or sick lizard simply can’t sustain the same vigorous display as a healthy one, so rivals can gauge the competition without the risk of actual combat.
Attracting Mates
Push-ups double as courtship signals. When a female lizard is watching, the male’s display lets her evaluate his fitness. She can assess the vigor of his push-ups, the size and color of his body patches, and how long he sustains the effort. Males often combine push-ups with other visual cues, like extending their dewlap (the colorful flap of skin under the chin) or shifting their body color to become more vivid. Dominant males tend to be brighter and display more intensely, giving females a clear visual shorthand for genetic quality.
Males also move between elevated perch positions throughout the day to maximize their visibility to females while simultaneously repelling other males. Push-up activity tends to peak during late morning hours, roughly between 10 a.m. and noon, when lizards are most active and light conditions make visual signals easiest to detect.
Why Push-Ups Cost More Than Head Bobs
Lizards have a menu of display options. Head bobs are quick, small movements that require relatively little energy. Push-ups, which involve raising and lowering the entire front half of the body, are considerably more demanding. Biologists consider head bobs the “cheaper” signal and push-ups the costlier one, which is exactly what makes push-ups more persuasive. Because they require real physical effort, they’re harder to fake.
This cost matters when conditions get tough. In studies of social lizards exposed to high temperatures, males did not reduce their push-up frequency even as the heat climbed. Instead, some males swapped out their head bobs for additional head bobs at intermediate temperatures while keeping push-ups steady. The fact that males refuse to cut back on push-ups even under thermal stress suggests these displays carry high social stakes. Skipping them could mean losing a territory or missing a mating opportunity.
Coordinated Displays With the Dewlap
Push-ups rarely happen in isolation. Lizards, especially anoles, typically pair them with dewlap extensions. The dewlap is a brightly colored throat fan that unfurls like a flag during displays. The combination of the body rising and falling while the dewlap flashes creates a multi-layered signal that’s visible from several meters away, even in cluttered environments like forest edges or urban landscapes.
Interestingly, the balance between these signals shifts depending on habitat. In urban settings with more visual noise from traffic, buildings, and people, anoles of multiple species rely more heavily on dewlap extensions than head bobs. Push-ups, with their larger whole-body motion, remain effective across environments because they’re simply harder to miss.
Warning Predators Away
Push-ups aren’t only directed at other lizards. When a predator approaches, some species use push-ups as a pursuit-deterrent signal. The logic works like this: once a lizard has spotted a predator, its chances of escaping are much higher than if it were caught off guard. By doing push-ups in the predator’s line of sight, the lizard communicates “I see you, and I’m alert enough to escape.” Research on Puerto Rican crested anoles confirmed that push-ups, dewlap extensions, turning to face the predator laterally, and actively inspecting the predator all function as deterrent signals. For the predator, attacking a fully alert, visibly fit lizard is a poor investment of energy compared to finding an easier target.
Body Temperature Regulation
There’s also a simpler, non-social explanation for some push-up behavior. Lizards are ectotherms, meaning they depend on their environment to regulate body temperature. Pushing up off a hot rock surface and lowering back down can help a lizard fine-tune how much heat it absorbs. By lifting its body, the lizard creates a small gap of air between its belly and the surface, allowing it to cool slightly. Pressing back down increases heat transfer. This thermoregulatory push-up looks similar to a social display but happens in a different context, often when the lizard is alone on a sun-baked surface with no audience in sight.
Do Female Lizards Do Push-Ups Too?
Yes, though less frequently and in narrower contexts. Females occasionally perform push-ups during territorial interactions with other females or as a response to an approaching male. The behavior is far more prominent and ritualized in males because the evolutionary pressure to defend territories and compete for mates drives them to signal constantly throughout the active hours of the day. For females, the display tends to be shorter and less intense, reflecting a different set of social pressures.