Reptiles provide us with important information about alternative tactics for solving specific problems of survival. Further, as the contemporary representatives of the evolutionary precursors of our own species, this information tells us much about the constraints upon and possibilities of our own biology. Several aspects of the manner in which physiological and environmental variables are integrated and reciprocally mediated are revealed with unusual clarity by the unique attributes of several reptile models. Here I wish to review recent findings of physiological stress responses and social behavior utilizing the model with which I am most familiar: The small diurnal iguanid lizard, Anolis carolinensis.