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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!


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