The Winter Olympics have just finished and it seems that our Geckos are coming out to play! Of course that might be helped by the break in the rain but it’s lovely to see them running around the walls (inside and out of course) catching their dinner.

I took that picture on my last trip to Australia. I have found it to be quite tricky to get a photo of a Gecko as their quite fast moving and if you get to close they, understandably, run away! I just found this picture on the laptop though of one of the different species of Geckos who visit out house.

On the ummmm Kitchen Table!

A few days ago we noticed that one of the Geckos was chasing the little mouse pointer as it moved around the computer screen but I didn’t manage to get a video. This morning it did the same again on the Aussie’s computer so I whipped out my phone to take a video which you can watch here.

I did a bit of research about Gecko’s (aka a Google search) and this is what I learnt from the Queensland Museum.

Australian geckos belong to the families Diplodactylidae, Carphodactylidae and Gekkonidae. Geckos are easily recognised, being mostly nocturnal with soft bodies and tiny granular scales. They have well-developed limbs with five digits, large eyes with vertical pupils, no eyelids, and broad fleshy tongues. In the absence of eyelids, the tongue is used to lick the eye clean (charming).

Climbing the Wall – They seem to like being upside down

The diversity in Australian geckos is remarkable. There are boldly patterned species (for example, Oedura marmorata and Strophurus taenicauda), drab species (for example, Gehyra dubia and Heteronotia binoei) and some, like the leaf-tailed geckos (Orraya occultus, Phyllurus spp., Saltuarius spp.), with cryptic patterns and broken outlines that blend perfectly with their backgrounds. Some are smooth and others are covered with small, raised tubercules.

We have also found that when under threat from animals such as birds (or a wayward door) that they will drop their tail and then slowly grow a new one. We’ve had one who did that since I’ve been here and it was really cool watching the tail grow back and also to see just how quickly it did it.

Gecko with a hint of tail growing back