Visual illusions remind us that we are not passive decoders of reality but active interpreters. Our eyes capture information from the environment, but our brain can play tricks on us. Perception doesn't always match reality. Scientists have used illusions for decades to explore the psychological and cognitive processes that underlie human visual perception. More recently, evidence is emerging that suggests many animals, like us, can perceive and create a range of visual illusions.

Male bowerbirds in Australia use a technique called forced perspective to make themselves look bigger to potential mates who visit their carefully constructed bowers. Visual illusions remind us that we are not passive decoders of reality but active interpreters. Our eyes capture information from the environment, but our brain can play tricks on us. Perception doesn't always match reality. Scientists have used illusions for decades to explore the psychological and cognitive processes that underlie human visual perception.

Does the cold make dragons smarter? A new study suggests it does. When researchers put bearded dragons eggs in incubated, colder environments, they found that they were better at solving cognitive tasks as adults than than those incubated at warmer temperatures. Specifically, bearded dragons incubated at colder temperatures picked up new skills faster than their counterparts incubated at hotter temperatures. The findings could provide new insights into how animals may react and adapt to human-induced climate change.

Bearded dragons that incubated at warmer temperatures are slower learners as adults. Many species, including humans, struggle to survive when temperatures rise too high. But even small increases can affect animals, causing subtle changes in physiology or behavior that alter how they fare. For some lizards, the effects of heat may, somewhat literally, be a no-brainer. A new study published in Royal Society Open Science has found that a temperature increase on the scale expected from climate change can make bearded dragons dumber.

Reptile sleep patterns might not actually be all that different from our own. Sleep patterns thought to be used only by mammals and birds have now been discovered in a non-avian reptile, the Australian bearded dragon. Finding those patterns, slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, in a reptile could dramatically revise scientists' models of how those sleep patterns evolved. And they may have evolved over 300 million years ago. "The status quo, until our study, was that these features of sleep only exist in mammals and in birds," Gilles Laurent, director for the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany and an author of the new paper announcing the findings in the journal Science on Thursday, tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview.

Reptile sleep patterns might not actually be all that different from our own. Sleep patterns thought to be used only by mammals and birds have now been discovered in a non-avian reptile, the Australian bearded dragon. Finding those patterns, slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, in a reptile could dramatically revise scientists' models of how those sleep patterns evolved. In fact, they may have evolved over 300 million years ago. "The status quo, until our study, was that these features of sleep only exist in mammals and in birds," Gilles Laurent, director for the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany and an author of the new paper announcing the findings in the journal Science on Thursday, tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview.