A Lizard That Announces Itself
The Tokay gecko does not hide. At up to 35 centimetres long and coloured a vivid blue-grey spotted with orange-red, Gekko gecko is built to be noticed. Its call, a loud, two-syllable bark that sounds like its own name, carries across rooftops and through walls on humid nights across South and Southeast Asia, including parts of Northeast India. It clings to vertical surfaces using millions of microscopic hair-like structures called setae on its toe pads, generating van der Waals forces strong enough to hold its body weight many times over. It is one of the largest gecko species on earth, and in the ecosystems it inhabits, it is a useful one: a predator of insects, smaller lizards, and the occasional small rodent.
