Crested Geckos
From New Caledonia, and thought extinct until it turned up again in 1994. It has no eyelids, so it cleans its eyes with its tongue, and a dropped tail is gone.
Overview
The crested gecko is a nocturnal, arboreal gecko from Grande Terre and the Isle of Pines in New Caledonia, about 20 cm long, living in rainforest where the rain can reach 400 cm a year. It was thought extinct for most of the twentieth century and was rediscovered in 1994, and the IUCN now lists it as Vulnerable with a downward trend.
Every crested gecko in the hobby descends from that rediscovery, which is why they are cheap, plentiful and captive bred while the wild population is protected.
Temperament
Calm, slow to start and increasingly bold with routine. Crested geckos are nocturnal, so the animal that sits still all day is the same animal that is climbing the whole enclosure at midnight.
They jump, and they jump well, which is the main thing to know before opening the door. Handling is best done low down and over something soft. Males kept together fight, so an enclosure holds one male, and a group means one male with females or a single animal on its own.
Care and grooming
A prepared crested gecko diet is the staple and it is nutritionally complete, which makes this one of the few reptiles that can be fed properly out of a pot. Insects two or three times a week add variety and enrichment.
The dropped tail does not grow back. Crested geckos autotomise readily when startled or grabbed, and unlike most geckos they regenerate nothing, so the great majority of adults in the hobby are tailless. It does the animal no harm, and it is worth expecting rather than discovering.
Living and exercise
18 by 18 by 24 inches, tall rather than long, planted with cork, vines and broad leaves. They live in shrubs and the lower canopy, rarely above three metres, so the furnishing should fill the middle rather than the floor.
Temperature is the constraint people miss. Their native range sits mostly between 22 and 24 C, and above about 82 F a crested gecko is in danger rather than merely warm. In most houses that means no heating at all, and in a hot summer it means active cooling.
Something here wrong or out of date?