Originally published at: The dragon-tailed gecko has an amazing tail | Boing Boing
…
5 Likes
This is like a Kaiju ability; if it wasn’t real it would seem ridiculous.
8 Likes
I would suppose if they were allowed as pets, I’d have to name mine Elmer. 
8 Likes
How have I not heard about this gecko until now? This is exactly the sort of critter I would have been obsessed with as a child.
3 Likes
Dragon-tailed Gecko, spraying sticky liquid from their tails straight at any would-be predators.
That’s what I do.
5 Likes
I’m doing it right now.
(Am I doing this right?)
3 Likes
Reminded me of the “cartoon character taking a drink after a close call in a shootout” trope.
6 Likes
I want to believe that this is true. But my searches aren’t finding any species of geckos called “dragon-tailed geckos” or any science-y information about how this works. All searches just lead back to the reddit post.
1 Like
Yeah, I’m not sure where dragon-tailed is from, I think it is just someone’s description instead of a name.
It is definitely real though. The geckos it shows up in are classified as Strophurus, often treated as a subgenus of Diplodactylus. The caudal glands are mentioned in a lot of papers; a lot are pay-walled but here’s one on their evolution that finds they go back about 25 million years.
4 Likes
1 Like
I think there’s a typo in the original Reddit post. There’s no gecko known as dragon-tailed gecko but there’s a gecko species called Golden-tailed Gecko (also called Golden Spiny-tailed Gecko). These guys look pretty similar to the video’s gecko.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
