MOON LIZARDS

Jake Cleaver sets the record straight on our friendly neighbourhood dragonettes, the Common Wall Gecko

Ijust 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. 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

of months, and seeing as they also use their tails as a sort of larder to store fat and water - they don’t take kindly to being spooked unnecessarily. I can just imagine them getting in a right strop because a friend of theirs came around unannounced. “Damn! Gordon, you didn’t tell me you were going to be back from WALL street this early!”. So remember, always knock first, and don’t even think about throwing a Gecko a surprise birthday party.

My mum asked me if anybody has looked into what makes some lizards able to regrow their appendages, as maybe we could learn a thing or two about how to regrow our own limbs? I told her they had. Or at least that it was the plot of a Spiderman comic. Doctor Curtis Conners, a genetic biologist and amputee, tried injecting himself with lizard DNA to see if he could get his arm to grow back. And it worked! Only trouble is that it didn’t stop there. He soon had a tail, some scales, a long sticky tongue and became the - spider, and Spiderman eating - villain known as “The Lizard”.

But I did wonder if we are actually looking into it in real life? Or if we took Stan Lee’s word as sufficient warning. Of course, we didn’t. And scientists have been looking into how it could help regrowth in spinal cord injuries. After all, how bad would it really be if we turned into Geckos? Let’s look at the advantages: Stick to walls. Don’t need to go to the dentist (I’ll explain later). Mosquitoes keep their distance, and with our new powers of regeneration we wouldn’t have to be so careful when chopping onions either.. A few scales doesn’t sound like a bad trade off.

They are also, I was surprised to discover, nocturnal creatures, and another of their many nicknames (and quite a cool one) is “Moon Lizards”. They could have fooled me as I see plenty during the day. But I suppose being cold blooded they need to lounge in the sun and try to warm up, and get a tan? (They do turn darker in the daytime.) But even at night they are still attracted to the lights, or shall we say, attracted to the insects, that are attracted to the lights.

Geckos eat moths, mosquitoes, cockroaches, worms, spiders and all kinds of bugs. They catch them with their sticky tongues. And even though they have up to 100 tiny teeth, and are constantly regrowing new ones (hence no dental bills), they don’t rip their prey to threads. Like all other lizards - they swallow them in one gulp, and crush.

Word of warning. Don’t ever try to have a staring competition with a Gecko. You will almost certainly blink first. You see, Geckos don’t have eyelids. Instead they have little protective scales that cover their eyes, and their tongues act as a sort of windscreen wiper to keep them clean. And before you think jeez, imagine not being able to close your eyes, ever! They have vertical pupils that can almost entirely overlap, and they block out the world that way. But when they are open (or at least underlapped?) they rely heavily on their eyesight. They have full colour vision and are actually capable of seeing a much larger spectrum of colours than us, especially in dim light. Ideal for long nights on the prowl.

Another way Geckos are different from other lizards is that they can be proper little chatterboxes. Most lizards don’t say very much, and if they do it’s just some hissy little comment. Geckos bark and click, and squeak and chirp and make all sorts of noises. But their go-to noise seems to be a sort of chuckle. At least it is when they are chatting up potential mates (and it’s going well). When you hear a growl you know somebody’s boyfriend has turned up. female Gecko will lay two eggs in a secluded location. But then, like most lizards, she has a rather lazy, laissez faire approach to parenting - she leaves them there and never comes back.

Long live the Gecko is what I say! And they really do. Up to a ripe old age of 15 years old. (If they get over their abandonment issues, and their tails work, of course.)

As you can see, these incredible little acrobats are really quite magical, with some truly amazing powers. They are like little superheroes, and they are here to help you. Be proud to have them on display in your home exhibition. They are your very own moving picture dragons - emblazoning your walls.