Crested gecko
Correlophus ciliatus
— Where the name comes from
Ciliatus means “furnished with eyelashes”: above the eyes it carries a row of pointed scales that really do look like lashes, and that continue down the back in two crests. Correlophus, coined in the nineteenth century, combines Greek elements alluding to a helmet and a crest. The common name, in every language, looks at those eyebrows.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Squamates
- Habitat
- Humid lowland forest, shrubland
- Range
- New Caledonia, Grande Terre and the Isle of Pines
- Size
- 20–25 cm including the tail, 35–55 g
- Diet
- Insects, ripe fruit, nectar, pollen
- Lifespan
- 15–20 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It sheds its tail and never grows it back: wild adults are often tailless.
- 02
It has adhesive lamellae even on the tail tip, which it uses as a fifth limb.
- 03
It cleans its eyes with its tongue, having no movable lids.
— What sets it apart
For nearly a century it was believed extinct. Described in 1866 and then never found again, it turned up in 1994, after a tropical storm had opened up a stretch of forest in southern New Caledonia. From the few animals legally exported descends a captive population now numbering in the millions, spread across the world, while in the wild the species remains vulnerable and lives on a single island. It is probably the commonest animal in the world that is also rare.
