Herp of the Day: Rhacodactylus auriculatus

Here's a cool gecko for you - the Gargoyle Gecko. This guy is the genus Rhacodactylus, an group of six awesome species restricted to the island of New Caledonia near Australia. All of the species are fairly large, charismatic, colorful, and consequently popular in captivity. Importation of wild-caught Rhacs stopped a while ago, but they do so well in captivity that captive-breeding has sustained the different species for many years.

Shawn has a big female Gargoyle named Darwin, until recently the only representative of her species that we have available for use in CHS education programs. The Gargoyle is a beefy gecko, with a round body very unlike the flat Hemidactylus featured recently and some other cool geckos coming up soon. Like the other rhacs they are arboreal and have several adaptations for it, including wide feet and a semi-prehensile tail, but this species tends more towards lower shrubbery habitats so they lack the more prominent adaptations of the other Rhac species (big webbed feet and the ability to flatten out while jumping).

The species comes in two distinct morphs - a mottled/banded base and a striped base pattern, and can vary considerable in color from whitish to brown to red to black and white, some with bright orange or red spots and stripes as additional pattern. For the most ridiculously awesome Gargoyles, see the gallery at Rhacos.com.

When Shawn got Darwin as a youngster she was mostly whitish with banding, and twin rows of orange spots down her back:

(next 2 photos by Shawn Billerman)

She has since grown into a portly adult. Her orange spots have all but faded away, but now she can turn a lovely shade of brown with some reddish mixed in. She is also great at demonstrating the variability in color that Gargoyles possess (certainly the best among Rhacs although R. ciliatus can give them a run). She is often nearly pure white while sleeping, darkening up to brown when she's running around at night. Here's a whole gallery of Darwin being Darwin:

(next 2 photos by Shawn Billerman)

If you look closely at some of her head shots, you can see the species' namesake - bony ridges and bumps along the top of their head behind the eyes. They aren't very pronounced in Darwin or in many individuals available in captivity because people tend to breed for color more than awesome head structure, but the bony knobs can be very prominent in wild individuals or some captive-bred individuals. For an example of better head structure, see here.

Darwin is no longer the only Gargoyle in the Cornell herp community. Recently our friend Amanda obtained a lovely male for breeding purposes, so by next year this place will be overrun with little gargoyles. Check out the male's awesome stripes:

(photos by Shawn Billerman)

Herp of the Day: Eublepharis macularius

My first, and best, gecko is Sobe the Leopard Gecko. I inherited Sobe from my friend Jenn at the start of my sophomore year. Sobe has a fantastic disposition, being very tame and practically begging for food. I take her on many education programs with the Cornell Herpetological Society.

She's smug because she knows she is the best

So happy chowing mealworms
Investigating the cricket bin

Sobe doing some educating

Here's a sequence of her shedding. Geckos tend to shed in one or several large pieces, eating the shed as they go. Here she gets the shed started on some rocks, then starts pulling off those yummy pieces.


Sobe is a wild-type Leopard Gecko, or about as close to wild-type as you see in the hobby today. She's yellow and has less black mottling than I would expect for a pure wild-type (you can see some first-generation young here). I bred Sobe for one season with my friend Amanda's male Frankie. I forget the exact morph name for Frankie, other than pretty!

Frankie

The unhappy couple

Their coupling gave me several clutches of eggs, from which I hatched three beautiful young, whom I named Audubon, Piha, and Sabine.

A gravid Sobe lets her belly hang free

The eggs are soft and leathery and are laid in clutches of two

The young start off boldly banded and patterned, but as they age the black fades and orange mixes in, showing their father's blood. They grow quite quickly!

Fresh from the egg

One Week

Two weeks - exploring the world

One to two months - less black and more color

3 months - the teenage months

I ended up giving away these young ones before the matured (at around a year old) but watching them grow was a great experience. I miss them and wish I could find out what they look like today. Just a few weeks ago I was forced to finally give up my precious Sobe as well, as I have to give up my gecko collection before my Venezuela work. She was the sweetest gecko and I will dearly miss her. I don't think I could find another Leopard like her.

Herp of the Day: Hemidactylus

The House Gecko genus, Hemidactylus, is perhaps the most successful of all geckos. Representatives have introduced themselves all over the world in just about any city in warm climates. They are particularly abundant in areas such as ports where they come in on shipping and establish themselves. They don't make it up to here in New York (too cold in the winter), but I've run into them in all of my more tropical travels, including restaurants in Mexico and bars in Costa Rica, and they are abundant in cities in the southern half of the US. These resilient nocturnal geckos love to run around on ceilings, catching insects drawn to the lights. In some buildings they can become downright dense. My friend Eric counted 74 H. frenatus in one motel in Papua New Guinea.

The House Gecko in its native habitat (Source)

There are around 80 species of Hemidactylus, with only of few of these making up the majority of the species that have been traveling the world. The widely traveled species (coincidently also the most common Hemidactylus available in the pet trade) include H. brookii (Brook's House Gecko), H. frenatus (House Gecko), H. garnotii (Indo-Pacific Gecko), H. mabouia (Tropical House Gecko), H. platyurus (formerly Cosymbotus platyurus, Flat-tailed House Gecko) and H. turcicus (Mediterranean House Gecko). All of these are small, brown or grayish, pebbly gecko species that are very difficult to tell apart - the Little Brown Job's of geckos. Some of these species, such as garnotii, are parthenogenetic (female-only, reproducing asexually) which facilitates their world-wide introductions.

So sweet and innocent, as they conquer the world

I haven't actually keyed out any of the Hemidactylus I've seen on my tropical ventures, but a while back my friend Amy acquired a few House Geckos from the local pet store, providing me with an exercise in identification. It turns out that the two individuals she acquired from the tank of house geckos at the store were two different species! I of course wanted to go back and identify everything else in the tank to see just how many Hemidactylus were in that grab-bag, but alas I never did.

Here they are, A and B. Any guesses?

Hemidactylus A

Hemidactylus B

You have no idea, right? Well that's why I'm here. Here are the feet if that helps:


It didn't? Oh well. Hemidactylus A is the easy one, although that may not be apparent from the photo above. This species resembles Flying Geckos (Ptychozoon) in having flaps of skin down the sides of the body and a dorso-ventrally flattened tail:

This is Hemidactylus [Cosymbotus] platyurus, the Flat-tailed House Gecko. The first time I encountered this species in a local pet store, I thought they were in fact young Ptychozoon (this was in the early days of my interest in geckos, forgive me here), so I asked the clerk if they were Flying Geckos or the House Geckos as labeled. The clerk replied that they were baby Bearded Dragons. Go figure. Anyways, here are a few more pictures of platyurus:


Hemidactylus B is the Indo-Pacific House Gecko, Hemidactylus garnotii, a parthenogenetic species. Enjoy a few photos of this species, recognizable by the yellowish underside, the rings of tubercles around the tail, and the pattern of light spots on a darker background.


Not all species of Hemidactylus are this plain, just the species that make it all over the world. For some interesting species, try giganteus, maculatus, triedrus, and others.