This very beautiful animal is a lovely adult male LEOPARD GECKO called Blotch.  Leopard geckos live in the hot, dry deserts of south-west Asia, in countries including Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.  They are nocturnal or active at night, which is when they hunt for insects and other small animals to eat.  Blotch is very friendly indeed and is a big favourite with children and adults alike!

Blotch is named because of the large dark spot in the middle of his back!  He is an adult male and one of the largest geckos in my collection, weighing in at just over 50 grammes.  He is also quite a bit more yellow in colouration than some of the others, as leopard geckos can be quite variable in terms of colour and pattern!

You can see clearly in this picture of Blotch that they have quite sharp claws, unlike most other geckos which have sticky foot pads.  The reason for this is that life in the desert would not suit sticky feet as there is not much to climb around on, so claws are more suitable for crawling around on the dry and rocky ground.

As well as  Blotch I have other leopard geckos of different ages and sizes.  Each of them has a different pattern but all are very beautiful, here are just a couple of them:

Leopard geckos lay eggs like most, but not all, lizards.  Their eggs can take anything between seven to fourteen weeks to hatch depending on the temperature at which they are incubated.  Very unusually, the temperature at which the eggs are incubated will also determine whether the baby gecko will be male or female, with females generally being produced at cooler incubation temperatures and males at higher temperatures!

I have been keeping and breeding leopard geckos since 1984 so have seen a lot of babies in my time, but despite this it is still really exciting to watch each one hatch and I never get tired of seeing new ones!  When they are ready to hatch the babies slit the egg with a special tooth at the front of their mouth, and they often sit with their heads partly or fully out of the egg for a while before fully emerging.  Here is one which has just slit the egg and has its nose poking out of the egg! 

When they first hatch leopard gecko babies usually have a banded pattern of dark brown and yellow, with a black and white banded tail like this one:

Sometimes the yellow colour can be much brighter, and still other times there may not be a banded pattern at all, as they can be very variable in colour and pattern from the moment they hatch as you can see in just the few examples of other babies below!

I'm sure you'll agree with me that whatever their pattern or colour may be, the babies are always gorgeous!  As they develop the pattern changes a huge amount until eventually they are quite spotty as demonstrated by Blotch right back at the top of the page!