Leaping Lizards! Live Gecko Found Inside a Man's Ear

By Sara G. Miller, Staff Writer | August 22, 2017 01:26pm ET

Talk about an earache: When a man in China went to the hospital because of severe ear pain, doctors found a live gecko curled up in his ear canal, according to news reports.

The man woke up in the morning complaining of severe pain in his ear, as well as the feeling of something squirming around in there, according to the Deccan Chronicle, a South Indian newspaper. When doctors peered inside, they spotted a live lizard.

Initially, the doctors tried to remove the gecko with tweezers, but the lizard squirmed when it was touched, the Deccan Chronicle reported

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Leaping lizards: Research tests the limits of gecko adhesion

June 27, 2017

Many geckos inhabit trees, often living high in the canopy. Relying on their incredible adhesive strength to help them break their fall, they jump from trees, and land on either leaves or relatively smooth tree trunks. How they withstand these impacts and what forces are imposed on the toepads of such falling/jumping geckos is not well understood, and could be critical to understanding the phenomenal adhesive power that these lizards exhibit.

A team of researchers led by a biologist at the University of California, Riverside now reports in the Royal Society Interface journal that the gecko adhesive system may reach its functional limits in extreme situations, such as when a gecko—seeking, for example, to escape a predator— falls/jumps from the canopy of a rainforest.



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New species of gecko has massive scales and tear-away skin

Date: February 7, 2017

Source: PeerJ

Many lizards can drop their tails when grabbed, but one group of geckos has gone to particularly extreme lengths to escape predation. Fish-scale geckos in the genus Geckolepis have large scales that tear away with ease, leaving them free to escape whilst the predator is left with a mouth full of scales. Scientists have now described a new species (Geckolepis megalepis) that is the master of this art, possessing the largest scales of any gecko.

The skin of fish-scale geckos is specially adapted to tearing. The large scales are attached only by a relatively narrow region that tears with ease, and beneath them they have a pre-formed splitting zone within the skin itself. Together, these features make them especially good at escaping from predators. Although several other geckos are able to lose their skin like this if they are grasped really firmly, Geckolepis are apparently able to do it actively, and at the slightest touch. And while others might take a long time to regenerate their scales, fish-scale geckos can grow them back, scar-free, in a matter of weeks.

This remarkable (if somewhat gruesome) ability has made these geckos a serious challenge to the scientists who want to study them. Early researchers described how it was necessary to catch them with bundles of cotton wool, to avoid them losing almost all of their skin. Today, little has changed, and researchers try to catch them without touching them if possible, by luring them into plastic bags. But once they are caught, the challenges are not over; identifying and describing them is even harder.

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A New Lizard Species is Discovered in Mumbai – via Herp Digest

By Angel Soleil, | September 28, 2016 Telegiz

Scientists have discovered a new species of gecko in Goregaon's Aarey Colony and Thane's Badlapur forests. Previously, the species was considered to be the same as "Geckoella collegalensis," but after extensive research, it was confirmed to be different.

The "Cyrtodactylus varadgirii" is the first new species of Gecko discovered after 130 years. The reptile was named after Varad Giri, a member of the Indian Herpetological Society.

For several years, Ishan Agarwal and Aaron Bauer of Villanova University as well as Anurag Mishra and Zeeshan Mirza of Saunak Pal of Bombay Natural History Society and the National Centre for Biological Science, have been doing research on the reptile. It was initially found to be the same species as the "Geckoella collegalensis," but it was later differentiated using the reptile's morphological characters and DNA data.

The "Cyrtodactylus varadgirii" has been spotted among the leaf litters in Maharashtra, Gujarat, and are more active during the night. Most of the known species of the group stay in the forest and hide under rocks and logs during the day, but Giri said they also prefer residing near human-dominated areas.

Giri, during his post-doctoral talk at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, explained that since the "Cyrtodactylus varadgirii" are mainly found in the ground, it did not have a well-developed lamellae [a special structure on the foot] as compared to other types of geckos.

Giri also added that the "Cyrtodactylus varadgirii" is brown in color and can grow to about six centimeters. The findings of the discovery has been published in "Zootaxa." 

Gecko study offers evidence that small morphological changes can lead to large changes in function

September 29, 2016 by Iqbal Pittalwala 

How do key innovations in the animal kingdom arise? To explore this question, gecko expert Timothy Higham, an associate professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside, led a team of evolutionary biologists to study Gonatodes, a genus of dwarf geckos. In the process, the researchers found a gecko, Gonatodes humeralis, that they posit offers a "snapshot" into the evolution of adhesion in geckos. 

"The gecko adhesive apparatus, one of the most spectacular innovations displayed by vertebrates, has been intensively studied for the last 16 years and is of considerable interest to nanotechnologists and biomimeticists," Higham said. "But almost nothing is known about the origin of this adhesive capability. G. humeralis, found in South America, shows how the adhesive capabilities of geckos may have come about. Our integrative analysis of this gecko shows that unexpectedly it has microscopic hairs, called setae, underneath its toes, which allow it to do something dramatically different than all other geckos in the Gonatodes genus: cling to smooth surfaces such as leaves. It does this without all of the complex structure of the toes that typify the geckos that we are more familiar with. In the lab, this gecko can climb smooth vertical surfaces using its incipient adhesive system."

Higham explained that the setae interact with surfaces through attractive van der Waals forces. The relatively simple expression of setae on the digits of G. humeralis thus provide an enormous advantage in sectors of the habitat typified by smooth, low-friction, inclined surfaces, such as leaves and slippery stems, allowing G. humeralis to avoid predators by occupying habitat that other members of the genus cannot. While it can securely attach to vertical bamboo shoots, for example, other species in the Gonatodes genus generally scale rough tree trunks, rocks, fallen palm trees and move on the ground – areas where their predators abound.

"The relatively simple adhesive system of the G. humeralis is indicative that slight modifications in form can dramatically influence functional outcomes and the ecological niches that can be exploited," Higham said. "This ostensibly padless gecko offers us a snapshot – a crucial intermediate stage – of the evolution of the adhesion apparatus. It's telling us, 'Look, this is how pad-bearing geckos started to acquire adhesion.'"

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