Wildlife
MOON LIZARDS Jake Cleaver sets the record straight on our friendly neighbourhood dragonettes, the Common Wall Gecko
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just love the beautiful moving dragon decorations that adorn our walls here in the Algarve. These roaming exhibits, known by many names, including the Mediterranean house Gecko, the Moorish Gecko, common wall Gecko, Osgas (as they are called in Portuguese), or even baby crocodiles, keep the walls of our houses interesting as they constantly reshuffle themselves leaving their silhouettes on display. Unbelievably though, these brilliant little reptiles get a bad rap. Lots of Portuguese people don’t like them, and I’ve known many a Portuguese maid (who ironically spend more time around them than anyone) that are scared of them. This is mainly due to rumours started centuries ago, and passed down through the generations. They tell tales of their tails falling into a teapot and poisoning the whole family. Or, of them crawling over people while they sleep and causing a rash. None of these things are true, at all. They aren’t poisonous. In fact, Geckos are good friends of humans. I mean they catch mosquitoes! How can you possibly not like anybody who does that? But it just shows you how stigmas can stick. Almost as well as Geckos can to walls. Almost. And that’s a good segue into the first of the
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Geckos incredible powers. Geckos can cling to walls, and even ceilings. This amazing gravity defying feat is thanks largely, to yes, their feet. They have lots (and lots) of tiny hairs called setae on their toes. These hairs allow them to get so close to the contours of the walls that as far as I can understand - a magic force, called the “van der Waals” effect kicks in. (Although, I think we can all agree it should be called the “on der Waals” effect.) And allows them, as long as they get the angle right, to create a bond with the surface they are on. So there you go. They aren’t sticky like you might have thought. They literally hang there by their toe hairs. (That’s a whole lot more useful than my toe hairs are.) It’s quite a unique ability. There’s no other lizard that can do it. The Gecko family are the largest animals capable of this trick. In fact, that’s my theory about why they are really disliked so much. We are all just jealous. And their powers don’t stop there. Say they are being chased by a cat, dog, snake, owl, rat, bat, or even chicken. (See, they’ve already got enough problems without us not liking them.) They simply deploy their tail. Which will twitch and flit around as a distraction, while they (hopefully) make their getaway. And then, and here’s the really impressive part - they can grow it back. A process that takes a couple
August 2020
