Tokay gecko
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| Gekko gecko (Linnaeus, 1758) |
The Tokay Gecko (Gekko gecko), is a nocturnal arboreal gecko native to southeast Asia and the Indo-Australian Archipelago. They are abundant, ranging from northeast India and Bangladesh, throughout Southeast Asia, to Indonesia and western New Guinea. Their native habitat is rainforest trees and cliffs, and they also frequently adapt to human habitations, roaming walls and ceilings at night in search of insect prey.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s it was introduced into Hawaii, Florida, Belize, and several Caribbean islands, where it can be considered an invasive species. It is arboreal, living on cliffs and trees; it is usual to see them inside human residences. A typical lifespan is 7–10 years. Tokay geckos are aggressive carnivores which will eat a variety of insects and even small mice. Their aggressive behaviour can lead to attacks on other male Tokays, other gecko species, and also human handlers.
Tokays are the second largest gecko species, attaining lengths of about 30-40cm (males), 20-30cm (females) and weights of 150-300g. They are distinctive in appearance, with a bluish or grayish body sporting orange or red spots.
They are renowned for their aggressive disposition and (unusually for lizards) their loud vocalizations, sometimes referred to as a bark. Their mating call, a loud croak, is variously described as sounding like tokeh or gekk-gekk, whence both the common and the scientific name (deriving from onomatopoeic names in Malay, Sundanese or Javanese), as well as the family name Gekkonidae and the generic term gecko.
The bite of a large tokay, while unlikely to cause lasting damage to a human, is painful and can easily draw blood. Furthermore, a tokay gecko, once having bitten, will not readily let go. Tokay owners report that the only effective way (other than waiting) to get the lizard to release its hold is to submerge it in water.
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[edit] Feet
Tokays have been used extensively to study the selectively adhesive properties of gecko feet, and indeed most of our knowledge about these properties stems from studies of Tokays. These studies have shown that geckos can cling upside down to polished glass, and the method by which the Tokay Gecko accomplishes this is hidden in its feet. The pads at the tip of a gecko's foot is covered in microscopic hairs. Each of these hairs splits into hundreds of tips only 200 nanometers in diameter. [1] By using these tiny hairs that can adhere to smooth surfaces, geckos are able to support their entire body weight with a single toe. The adhesive force created by these hairs, called setae (pronounced see' tee), lining the gecko's toes is estimated to be so strong that a single seta can lift the weight of an ant. Recent experiments have shown that the grip of a typical Tokay Gecko could theoreticly support a rucksack weighing 90 pounds, while suspended upside down on a ceiling.
The strong adhesion is caused by an intermolecular force called Van der Waals force. This force is weak until it gets very close to a surface. When the surface it contacts is large, it can add up to a strong attraction. Van der Waals forces occur when unbalanced electrical charges around molecules attract each other. The charges are always fluctuating and can sometimes reverse direction, but the outcome is that they draw molecules together, such as molecules in a gecko's foot and molecules on a smooth wall.[1]
To release their feet (to break the intermolecular force) they curl their toes. When a toe is at an angle of 30 degrees the binding breaks.
[edit] As pets
While Tokay Geckos are frequently seen in the exotic pet trade, they are often seen as an undesirable animal to own because of their aggressive temperament. Their popularity, in the United States at least, has waned somewhat in recent years. Tokay Geckos can be very attractive display animals, but very few can be handled by their keepers. [2]
They are abundant and inexpensive, make a spectacular display animal (although, being nocturnal animals, they are not very active in the daytime), and are not difficult to maintain or breed, so long as they are given a sufficiently large enclosure (which should be vertically oriented). Tokays prefer a temperature gradient inside their enclosures: 27-33 °C (80-90 °F) while a humidity of 55-75% is ideal. Heat is best provided with a ceramic heater or red-colored light bulb placed over one half of the enclosure. UV light is not needed. They may be fed insects and small ("pinky") mice. [3] Some owners report that they have "tamed" their tokays to the point that they can handle them, but for the most part these lizards do not take well to being handled, unlike (for instance) the more popular Leopard gecko and Crested gecko. Those wishing to keep tokays long term should consider having their specimens tested and treated for internal parasites.
Pet shop owners in New York City have been known to recommend the tokay gecko to apartment dwellers as a means of keeping the perennial cockroach problem under control. While there is no doubt that a freely-roaming tokay will make a dent in the household insect pest population (as they do in Southeast Asia, where they frequently live in human habitations), there are a few disadvantages to this approach. For one, if pesticides have been used in an attempt to exterminate the insects, these may be ingested by the lizard and cause it harm. Also, especially if a breeding pair of geckos is present, the loud mating calls can be quite disturbing to the apartment's human occupants. Finally, there is the problem of gecko droppings ending up behind furniture and in other obscure places.
[edit] External links
[edit] Reference Page
- ^ a b Discovery Channel, “Beyond Invention”. May 28-29, 2004.
- ^ "Wild Facts Tokay Gecko", BBC-Science and Nature, June 1, 2006.
- ^ Baldwin, Robert. "Tokay Gecko", Care and Information Sheet, Western New York Herpetological Society
