Leopard gecko
Eublepharis macularius
— Where the name comes from
Eublepharis means “with true eyelids”, from eu and blépharon, and that is its main oddity: nearly all geckos have the eye covered by a fixed transparent scale they must lick clean, while this one has movable lids and blinks. Macularius is “spotted”, for the black blotches on a yellow ground.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Squamates
- Habitat
- Stony steppe, rocky desert, arid clay ground
- Range
- Afghanistan, Pakistan, north-western India, eastern Iran
- Size
- 20–27 cm including the tail, 50–80 g
- Diet
- Crickets, spiders, scorpions, grubs, small vertebrates
- Lifespan
- 15 years, over 20 in captivity
— Characteristics
- 01
It has no adhesive pads: it has claws, and does not climb glass.
- 02
It stores fat in its tail, which it uses as a larder in lean months.
- 03
It is nocturnal and spends the day under stones, in cool burrows.
— What sets it apart
It is the reptile that invented the reptile trade. Easy to keep, gentle and willing to breed in captivity, from the 1970s onwards it became the animal on which the whole of modern herpetoculture was built: hundreds of selected colour varieties now exist, and the overwhelming majority of animals sold are captive-bred rather than caught. It is the case in which breeding genuinely took the pressure off wild populations, which with other species has not happened.
