These amazing looking animals are known as CRESTED GECKOS.  Crested geckos live only on a tiny group of islands called New Caledonia, which are off of the east coast of Australia, and nowhere else in the world.  They are fantastic climbers and have sticky pads on their toes which allow them to climb up any surface including glass!  They can also jump quite well and in the wild they would jump from branch to branch in the forest trees in which they live.

Crested geckos get their name from the 'crests' of spiky scales which start at their eyes and run down their necks and part of the way down their backs.  One of my most popular crested geckos named Stumpy (pictured directly above and below) has a particularly well-developed set of crests as you can see below:

Stumpy gets his name from the fact that he does not have a tail, and just has a little stump where the tail would usually be (see below).  Unfortunately he lost his tail as a tiny baby, long before I owned him. Unlike most geckos and other lizards, which can re-grow their tails if they lose them, crested geckos cannot so Stumpy has lived almost his whole life without a tail.  Despite not having a tail Stumpy is able to move around just as well as any of my other crested geckos which do have tails.  In fact being tail-less doesn't seem to bother him at all, as he is the best jumper of them all! 

Crested geckos come in an amazing variety of colours and patterns, ranging from bright red or orange to yellow, and from pale cream to dark brown.  I have many other crested geckos in my collection as they are one of my favourite species to keep and breed. 

Another tailless crested gecko in my collection who is HUGELY popular with everybody he meets is the lovely Vern, an adult male:

Despite being virtually patternless Vern is still extremely beautiful and his skin looks and feels like soft velvet!  Vern lives with a group of female geckos who are all pictured below.  First up is a beautiful bright orange/red crested gecko named Flame!  She really is stunning as you can see below:

Despite being incredibly beautiful in this picture, Flame does not always look like this.  During the daytime crested geckos tend to be much less colourful than they do at night, although the colour change can also be triggered by changes in mood, humidity levels and temperature.  Here is a picture of Flame in her 'fired-down' colours rather than her 'fired-up' colours as she is above:

The second female living with Vern is named Stripe and is a tailless gecko with the most beautiful 'pinstriping' down her back!  She almost seems to shine and it is a truly magnificent effect!

The third and final gecko living with Vern is a very pretty sandy-coloured gecko named, unsurprisingly, Sandy!!

This next gorgeous gecko is also absolutely beautiful and named Mrs Splodge!   She is one of many 'dalmatian' crested geckos in my collection, which get their name due to the random black spotting all over their bodies, just like the Dalmatian breed of dog!  

The geckos directly above and below are two female 'harlequin' patterned crested geckos, named Harley and Quinn.  These are very colourful and have patterned sides and legs as well as the pattern down their backs, which is what gives the name 'harlequin' crested geckos.  Mine also have dalmatian spots like Mrs Splodge!

Sometimes the 'dalmatian' spotting can make crested geckos look really quite spotty, like this stunning one below which is named Polly - I'm sure you will agree she is quite gorgeous!  Polly is the only individual in my collection who has tiny additional 'toes' sticking out of the back of her rear feet - this is a condition known as polydactyly (hence the name Polly).  Although it doesn't affect her in any way at all it is considered by breeders like myself to be an undesirable genetic trait so Polly is purely a pet gecko and not one which breeds in my collection - she is still one of my favourites though because she looks amazing!

Polly would be classed as a 'super dalmatian' crested gecko due to the numbers and size of her spots, which combined with her beautiful pattern certainly give her a striking appearance! 

As mentioned in the text about Flame, further up this page, crested geckos show an amazing degree of colour change at different times of day and also due to their mood and environmental conditions.  I have captured some lovely images of Polly to show how different they can look!  Here she is in her 'fired-down' colours (left) and 'fired-up' colours (right):

As well as these images Polly is also an ideal gecko to demonstrate how the dalmatian spotting changes and develops over time.  Unfortunately I don't have any good photographs of her as a baby but you can still see how her spots increased in size (and how new ones developed) in these images below.  The left image was taken on February 8th 2011 and the right image on June 8th 2011, so just four months apart.  If you look closely at the back of the head and neck in particular you can see that the spots have increased in size and some new ones have developed too!!

Another 'super dalmatian' crested gecko in my collection is the adult male below, named Splodge.  He is also the male who lives with Harley, Quinn and Mrs Splodge (hence her name) and he is massively popular with everybody he meets!

The most surprising thing about Splodge is that when he first hatched he looked absolutely nothing like he does now, and in fact I would never have believed he would turn out to be so stunning based on the colour he used to be!  He is the gecko on the left of the picture below, which was taken shortly after he hatched in September 2007, and as you can see he has changed a HUGE amount since then!

This is what makes crested geckos so exciting to keep and especially to breed, as you can never tell what the new babies will look like OR how they will end up looking when they are fully grown!

Here are some more pictures of just a few of the many babies I have hatched since I started breeding this wonderful species in early 2007:

Like all lizards, crested geckos have to shed their skin regularly during their lifetime.  Prior to shedding their skin a gecko's colours appear very different to usual as you can see here, in this picture of the fabulous Splodge at the early stages of shedding his skin:

As you can see from this picture, Splodge does not look his usual vibrant self at all!  This is because the old outer skin has separated from the new skin and is ready to come off - it actually looks a bit like he is wearing a thin plastic bag over his entire body!!  If you look on his head you will see that there are a couple of small tears in the old skin, showing that it is fully loose and ready to be shed (and in the case of these geckos, completely eaten)! 

The pictures above and below show how the skin looks when it starts to be torn (usually bitten), you can see clearly how the new skin underneath is much more brightly coloured than the old skin which is being removed during the shedding process!

Here is Splodge's skin after he had finished the process, taken at night when his colouration is a lot brighter than during the day when the photos above were taken!

Crested geckos have many amazing and interesting features but my favourite by far is the fact that they have no eyelids and have to lick their eyes to clean them!  The brilliant picture below shows Peach doing this perfectly and I must say a big thank you to my friend Sharon Crawford for being in the right place at the right time and trying hard to capture the moment so well on her camera, especially after I have failed to do so myself despite many previous attempts!