Tokay gecko
From Freepedia
| 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 not unusual 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. 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 or Javanese), as well as the family name Gekkonidae and the generic term gecko. United States soldiers in Vietnam, notoriously, interpreted the nighttime calls of the local tokays as sounding like "Frack you" and gave the gecko the nickname Frack-you lizard, a sobriquet which might also appropriately describe the lizards' attitude towards a perceived predator: when threatened, rather than attempting to escape, they open their mouth in a wide gaping display, and they do not hesitate to bite. 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.
As pets
While Tokay Geckos are frequently seen in the 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.
They are abundant and inexpensive (most specimens sold are wild-caught), 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). They may be fed insects and small ("pinky") mice. 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.
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.
External links
- Introduction into Belize
- Western New York Herpetological Society Tokay Gecko Care Sheet and Information
- BBC Wildfacts
- Global Gecko Association: Tokay geckos
- My experiences with and observations of Tokay Geckos
