Coming soon to Scaly Slimy Spectacular: The Amphibian and Reptile Experience!

Hey all, this is Logan with the Herpetology Team here at Zoo Atlanta. Today, I wanted to write a little about two reptiles of day and night that you might find here among our Scaly Slimy Spectacular inhabitants very soon. These are the Henkel’s leaf-tailed gecko and the giant day gecko, both native to the humid forests of Madagascar. While both are geckos living in the same spot, they have many unique characteristics that differentiate them.

First, let’s touch upon the leaf-tailed gecko. This is a nocturnal species that can lay motionless throughout the entire day, avoiding detection from predators by utilizing excellent camouflage. Earthy-toned colorings and a unique silhouette of flaps and frills make the animal essentially disappear against anything it has climbed and clung to. As the name suggests, part of their camouflage comes from their broad, flat tails that resemble leaves or bark on a tree. This ability to blend in is impressive considering this species can grow up to about 10 inches long.

While the leaf-tailed gecko spends most of the daytime inactive, it springs to life at night and hunts for crickets, snails, and other invertebrates to eat. Large, marble-like eyes with narrow pupils aid with nocturnal navigation, and you can still appreciate these beautiful eyes during the day because they have no eyelids! Climbing and adhering to a wide variety of surfaces with their specialized toes also allows effortless traversal of their native rainforests.

The daytime counterpoint is the giant day gecko (pictured). This species is bright green, often with red-to-orange spots along the back and stripes on the head. They typically grow to be 5-9 inches long (with males being larger). They also have large eyes for their head size, but they have deep, dark eyes with large round pupils. Overall, they are slenderer and more in-line with what you would expect from other lizards. All these descriptions to say: if you know the Geico Insurance mascot, then you know what a day gecko looks like as their mascot is, in fact, based on the giant day gecko!

The giant day gecko is a diurnal lizard, meaning that it hunts during the day and rests during nighttime. It feasts on insects and invertebrates, as well, but also enjoys licking fruits, flower nectar, and honey. What you will notice, as I did, is that these geckos are deceptively FAST, almost teleporting in the blink of an eye. Don’t lose track of them zipping around when you see them in their new home!

Besides residing in the same general area of the world, these geckos share the trait of adhesive toe pads that allow them to stick to pretty much anything, no matter how flat it is. This makes them both excellent at traversing their native tree-filled environments, and in human care, they also enjoy hanging out on the flat walls of habitats or even on the viewing glass!

Both species are currently housed separately in the behind-the-scenes areas of the Zoo Atlanta Herpetology Department. As I write this, our team is working to build a brand-new habitat from scratch that will accommodate the nocturnal and diurnal species together. Look out for it soon in Scaly Slimy Spectacular to appreciate these extremely unique geckos!

Logan S.
Herpetology Team