Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

Tokay Geck­oes are found from north­east India to the Indo-Aus­tralian Arch­i­pel­ago.

• Biogeographic Regions
• palearctic
  • native
• australian
  • native

Habi­tat

The Tokay Gecko lives in trop­i­cal rain forests, on cliffs and trees, and as pets amongst human habi­ta­tion. They are ar­bo­real (tree-dwelling and cliff-dwelling).

• Terrestrial Biomes
• rainforest

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Tokay Geck­oes are one of the largest geck­oes alive today with a length of around 35 cm. The body of a Gekko gecko is cylin­dri­cal, squat, and some­what flat­tened on the upper side. The limbs are well-de­fined and uni­formly de­vel­oped. The head is large and set off from the neck, and they have large, promi­nent eyes with ver­ti­cally-slit pupils. The eye­lids of these an­i­mals are fused to­gether and trans­par­ent. They also have re­mains of a rudi­men­tary third eye on the top of their head, which is be­lieved to co­or­di­nate their ac­tiv­ity to light con­di­tions.

The ears can be seen on the out­side of the gecko as small holes on both sides of the head. It is pos­si­ble to see straight through the head of these geck­oes through their ears. Tokay Geck­oes have a hear­ing range from about 300 Hertz to 10,000 Hertz.

They have soft, gran­u­lar skin that feels vel­vety to the touch. The col­oration of a Tokay Gecko is very im­por­tant to its lifestyle. The skin is usu­ally gray with sev­eral brown­ish-red to bright red spots and flecks but it has the abil­ity to lighten or darken the col­or­ing of its skin. They usu­ally do so in order to blend in or to be less no­tice­able to other an­i­mals.

In the Gekko gecko, there are ob­vi­ous male and fe­male dif­fer­ences. The male is more brightly col­ored than the fe­male and gen­er­ally, the male is slightly larger than the fe­male. A con­spic­u­ous dif­fer­ence be­tween the sexes is the small amount of swelling at the base of the tail of the male, due to the pres­ence of the two hemipenes. Also, the males have vis­i­ble pre­anal and femoral pores and postanal tu­ber­cules.

Some­thing that is very help­ful to the Gekko gecko is their toes that have fine setae on them, al­low­ing them to cling to ver­ti­cal and over-hang­ing sur­faces and move at fast speeds.

Re­pro­duc­tion

Dur­ing breed­ing sea­son, which lasts about 4-5 months, males cop­u­late fre­quently with fe­males, often grasp­ing them with their mouths dur­ing cop­u­la­tion. Dur­ing the breed­ing pe­riod, fe­males lay eggs about every month. In order to at­tract a mate, a male has a call that can be heard over a wide area. This loud "to-kay" sound is re­peated mul­ti­ple times. The male ap­proaches the fe­male from the rear, and they move side to side while he holds her in place with his teeth, bit­ing her in the neck re­gion. The fe­male looks for a lay­ing- site, and when she finds the right one, she af­fixes the hard-shelled eggs (oval-shaped; any­where from 3 mm to 45 mm) to a solid foun­da­tion where they are guarded by both par­ents until they hatch. In cap­tiv­ity, Tokay Geck­oes are prone to eat­ing their own eggs.

Lifes­pan/Longevity

• Average lifespan
  Status: captivity

  10.5 years

  Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Be­hav­ior

Tokay Geck­oes are soli­tary crea­tures. They only en­counter the op­po­site sex dur­ing the breed­ing sea­son. They will de­fend their ter­ri­tory against in­trud­ers of the same species and of other species, en­sur­ing less com­pe­ti­tion for food. If their space is vi­o­lated, a fight will def­i­nitely come about. The ter­ri­tory is gen­er­ally guarded by males but is oc­ca­sion­ally watched by the fe­male.

These geck­oes can in­flict se­vere bites if they are suf­fi­ciently threat­ened.

The nose is used for breath­ing and also for de­tect­ing scents. Scents are de­tected by the large num­ber of sen­sory cells on a mem­brane in the nos­trils. They are also de­tected by using the Ja­cob­son's organ which de­vel­ops sim­i­larly to the nose but sep­a­rates from the nose dur­ing em­bry­onal de­vel­op­ment and forms its own at­tach­ment to the palate. The Tokay Gecko's tongue is used to carry scent par­ti­cles to the holes in the palate. As the gecko "waves" his tongue, these par­ti­cles are car­ried to the palate and then trans­ported to the Ja­cob­son's organ.

They have folds of skin that pre­vent the an­i­mal from cast­ing a shadow while rest­ing on a tree. They open up the skin fold com­pletely and this al­lows them to blend in with the tree bark.

An im­por­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Tokay Gecko is its abil­ity to cast off its tail in de­fense and re­gen­er­ate a new one. The part of the tail that has been cast off will con­tinue to move vi­o­lently for sev­eral min­utes until it slows down and stops, thus giv­ing the gecko fair time to es­cape. The tail has sev­eral sec­tions on it where it can break off at any given mo­ment. It takes ap­prox­i­mately three weeks for these geck­oes to com­pletely re­gen­er­ate a new tail al­though it is usu­ally never as long as the orig­i­nal tail.

Calls of the Tokay Gecko are used for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, find­ing mem­bers of the op­po­site sex dur­ing the breed­ing sea­son, and as a means of de­fense (they emit a hiss­ing or croak­ing noise when being at­tacked).

Tokay Geck­oes are noc­tur­nal crea­tures.

Food Habits

Tokay Geck­oes are in­sec­tiv­o­rous. In cap­tiv­ity, they usu­ally feed on spring­tails, meal­worms, cock­roaches, crick­ets, grasshop­pers, pink mice, and lo­custs.

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Tokay Geck­oes eat pests such as cock­roaches and lo­custs. They are sold as pets.

In parts of south­east Asia, Tokay Geck­oes are re­garded as har­bin­gers of luck, good for­tune, and fer­til­ity.

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

These an­i­mals have an un­pleas­ant dis­po­si­tion and can in­flict se­vere bites when han­dled.

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

There is no spe­cial sta­tus for Tokay Geck­oes.

• IUCN Red List [Link]

  Not Evaluated

Con­trib­u­tors

Jaime Corl (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.

Ref­er­ences

Do, H.G., and G.C.G. 1997. "Geck­oes." The New En­cy­clo­pe­dia Brit­tan­ica. Chicago: En­cy­clo­pe­dia Brit­tan­ica, Inc. Vol. 26 (macropae­dia). p. 693.

Frank, Nor­man, and Erica Ramus. 1995. A COM­PLETE GUIDE TO SCI­EN­TIFIC AND COM­MON NAMES OF REP­TILES AND AM­PHIB­IANS OF THE WORLD. Pottsville (PA): NG Pub­lish­ing Inc. p. 146.

Henkel, Friedrich-Wil­helm, and Wolf­gang Schmidt. 1995. Geck­oes. Trans. John Hack­worth. Mal­abar (FL): Krieger Pub­lish­ing Com­pany. pp. 7-9, 12, 14, 19-23, 37, 45, 136, 153.

Schmidt, Karl P., and Robert F. Inger. 1988. Aca­d­e­mic Amer­i­can En­cy­clo­pe­dia. Dan­bury: Grolier In­cor­po­rated. Vol. 9. pp. 66-67.

Wag­ner, Ernie. 1980. RE­PRO­DUC­TIVE BI­OL­OGY AND DIS­EASES OF CAP­TIVE REP­TILES. Lau­rence (KS): Meser­aull Print­ing, Inc. pp. 91, 115-116.