"Undoubtedly the issue of an independence referendum was a factor in this election result, but I think there were other factors in this election result as well," she told a press conference.
"We will reflect on these results, we will listen to voters and we will consider very carefully the best way forward for Scotland."
Last year's vote for Britain to leave the European Union had fuelled separatists' ambitions to take Scotland out of the 300-year-old British union, but the election results could serve to dash them again.
"Nobody will condemn the First Minister if she now decides to re-set her course. This is her opportunity to do so -- and I urge her to take it immediately. She must take it off the table," Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said.
Davidson led her party to its best result in Scotland for three decades, in contrast to Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May's dismal showing elsewhere in the UK.
'Utterly disappointing'
The separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) lost 21 seats of their 56 parliamentary seats on Thursday.
The SNP remains Scotland's biggest party Despite the punishing losses, including former first minister Alex Salmond as well as the party's current deputy leader Angus Robertson failing to win seats.
Sturgeon said that while the SNP finished first in Scotland "It is an inescapable fact that we also suffered some bitterly disappointing losses".
Scotland voted by 55 percent against independence in a 2014 referendum, but the defeated nationalists voted en masse for the SNP in 2015 handing them 56 out of the 59 seats in Scotland.
May called the snap general election in an attempt to strengthen her hand in forthcoming Brexit talks -- and quell the nationalists' ongoing agitation for a second independence referendum.
She lost her parliamentary majority following a late surge for left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Conservative wins in Scotland.
The Labour party, which used to dominate Scottish politics, was reduced to just one Scottish lawmaker in 2015.
Tha figure rose to seven in Thursday's voting.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said her new MPs will be firm opponents of a second independence referendum.
"The SNP vote is crumbling in their heartlands...it's a very bad night for the SNP," she said.
'An open Brexit'
Professor Iain Begg, of the London School of Economics, said it had been a "disastrous" election for the SNP.
"The Scottish nationalists, losing more than 20 seats, that is very bad news for them and for any ambition Nicola Sturgeon has to call a second referendum," he told AFP.
The SNP remains Britain's third-largest party, giving Sturgeon the chance to seek a "progressive alliance" with Labour to counter May's Conservative Party.
"We will work with others if it is at all possible to keep the Tories out of government," Sturgeon said.
"We stand ready to play our part in that alliance. And it is needed now more than ever."
Reflecting on the overall British results, Davidson said her Conservative Party needed to take account of their losses: "It is incumbent on us to listen to other parties in Parliament, and people outside it, about the best way forward."
She reiterated the party's commitment to leaving the EU -- vehemently opposed by the SNP -- while hinting she may try to move her party away from their "hard Brexit" stance of quitting the European single market.
"At the same time we must in my view seek to deliver an open Brexit, not a closed one, which puts our country’s economic growth first," she said.
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