Tokay gecko
Gekko gecko
— Where the name comes from
Both “gecko” and the species name imitate the call: at night the tokay throws out a cry that sounds like “to-kay, to-kay”, the origin of its name in many South-East Asian languages. It is one of the largest and most vocal geckos, blue and spotted with orange.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Squamates
- Habitat
- Tropical forest, but also the walls and ceilings of houses
- Range
- South and South-East Asia
- Size
- 25–35 cm including tail
- Diet
- Insectivore — insects, with the odd small vertebrate
- Lifespan
- 10 years and more
— Characteristics
- 01
The toes are covered in millions of microscopic hairs that cling to any smooth surface.
- 02
It walks on glass and upside down on ceilings using molecular forces.
- 03
If seized it sheds its tail, which goes on writhing to distract the predator.
— What sets it apart
The gecko walks on ceilings by a trick of physics, not by suckers or glue: its toes carry millions of tiny hairs, each branching into hundreds of tips finer than a micron, and at that scale the weak attractions between molecules come into play — van der Waals forces. Summed over billions of contacts, they hold the whole animal upside down on a sheet of glass. Engineers copy those hairs to make dry adhesives, which stick and release without leaving a trace.
