On a Saturday morning a couple of months ago something seemed odd about our  gecko. Gordon, is a Crested Gecko that goes by the name of Rhacodactylus ciliatus.

This specie of gecko was recently thought to be extinct until a few years ago and is now on the endangered species list.  They are from New Caledonia which is located by Australia and New Zealand. They are an interesting lizard that needs to lick its eyeballs to retain moisture and keep them clean and they also do a pretty good impression of Spider-Man because they can climb walls. I am not sure what force Spidey uses to climb walls but the gecko have hairs called setae which uses the van der Waals force to climb.  Sadly,this isn’t a force you will find in Star Wars, but rather physical chemistry. You can read more about it here.

Back to the point- I went in to apply a treatment of antibiotic ointment because earlier in the week he suffered a slight laceration at the base of his tail.

A conversation between Marilyn and I probably sounded like this:

ME: Hey Marilyn!!??

MARILYN: Yea?

ME: Is there something strange about him because I don’t think its supposed to look like that

MARILYN:OMG

Gordon was missing his tail. We eventually found it at the bottom of his enclosure.We aren’t sure exactly why Gordon lost his,but many lizards are able to “drop” their tails in order to escape predators,generally they can grow back but not to its original state. As of now, Gordon has started to regrow some of his tail. Below are some pics of Gordon and his detached tail.