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Lizard Push-Ups
Lab 5 (Module 5)
David Gurrola
BIO 112
November 17, 2020
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For this lab we got to watch the “Lizard Push-up” video that was about 13-

seconds long. The video was interesting, as I was never aware that lizards could actually

do push-ups and that it was for a purpose. Come to find out, male lizards do push-ups to

show off and defend its territory from other males. They also do push-ups to attract a

female lizard for mating, as this lets the females know that are strong and can protect

them. This goes hand in hand with our discuss from this week, as this will show what the

cost is for a male to get a female lizard to reproduce. But the question we are ask her for

this lab is, how many crickets did the lizard need to eat to fuel his 30 days of push-up

display? To find out this answer we will need a few things.

This lab will require some materials and methods to get an accurate guess or

answer to the question. In order to complete this lab, we will need a laptop, pen and

paper, a calculator, dietary calories and grams for each cricket, the lizard push-up video,

and a data chart to track the information.

In order to get the most accurate answer possible, I must’ve watch this short 13

second video at least 20 times. In doing so, I was finally able to breakdown the number of

push-up completed by the lizard. The video shows that 8 push-ups were completed in the

first 8 seconds of the video. But for this lab purpose and with the information provided, I

will conduct this math off the full 13 seconds of the video. So, 30 minutes a day is what

this male lizard does his push-ups for. For a total of 30 days, as this is the full duration of

the breeding season. So here comes the simple math:

Time 13 sec 26 sec 39 sec 52 sec

Push-ups 8 16 24 32
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In a one minute (60 seconds) the male lizard is able to get 32 push-ups in. You

take this number and times it by 30 minutes you get, 960 push-ups a day. Then, we will

need to take 960 and times it by 30 days, which is 28,800 in the full duration of the

breeding period. We know the dietary calories spent doing these push-ups is 0,1 dietary

calories of energy for the male lizard and his push-ups. So, 28,800 times 0.1 equals 2880

calories. Now, we pull the calories that are in each cricket and the weigh in grams of the

crickets. Which would be 121 calories, 100grams and weigh is 0.5 grams each. You take

these numbers and divide them you get 0.605 calories. We then will need to take the

28,800 push-ups and divide it by 0.605 calories, which will be 47,693.3 crickets. This is

the total number of crickets the make lizard will need in order to complete his 30 days of

push-ups for breeding season.

The cost of what it takes for a male lizard to find a mate takes a lot of energy and

food in order to attract a female to reproduce. The number of crickets it will take to fuel

the 30-day window is very high in my opinion. I can see why only the strong crickets are

picked to have more offspring.