Crested Geckos

This is a crested Gecko. My crested gecko, to be more precise, she/he is called Saturn, like the planet. I got Saturn nearly a year ago, but the species has been around for centuries!


Crested geckos were first described in 1866 by a French Zoologist called Alphonse Guichenot. The species was thought to be extinct until 1994, until they were redescovered on New Caledonia. New Caledonia is a French owned island located in the South Pacific Ocean. The climates there are very tropical, with the hot season being in November. Temperatures during this time can reach up to 27 and 30 celcius.

The scientific name for Crested Geckos is Rhacodactylus Cillatus. Cillatus comes from the latin word Cillia, meaning fringe or eyelash. Geckos in the Rhacodactylus family tend to be arboreal, meaning that they spend time climbing and in trees.

Crested Geckos can grow up to 15 - 25cm, which makes them one of the larger types of Geckos. They have soft skin with spines going from head to tail in a row on either side of the back. In this image I have used Saturn as an example, the red shows where the spines are.

Crested geckos do not have eyelids like us humans, and therefor use their tongues to keep them moist. On their toes and tail there are small hairs called setae, these are there to give them the chance to grip onto any surface, in the wild this would be trees and leaves. On their toes, they have tiny nails which aid in their climbing. They also have a Semi-Prehensile tail, which acts as a fifth limb. Much like a lot of lizards, they can drop their tail to distract predators. However, unlike most geckos they cannot regrow their tails. Dropping the tail is not detrimental to them, in fact most adults in the wild lack one. When the tail has been dropped, it can move on its own for 2 - 5 minutes, giving the geckos plenty of time to scurry away from the threat. There is hardly any blood when this happens, due to the capillaries at the base of the tails being able to close very quickly.

As you can imagine, they can jump really far to reach new places to hide and hunt bugs. This normally happens at night, as they are a nocturnal species. During the day they sleep in sunny high spots. When they are babies, they can shed their skin up to once a week as they are growing but adults generally shed every two months or so.

Crested geckos eat insects as well as fruits. However in captivity, they are often fed a diet of a fruity powder mix with water added to give it the texture of ketchup/baby food. In captivity, they can live up to 15 - 20 years if given the correct care.

I hope you learned something from this! If you want to see more of Saturn, she has an instagram called Saturn.crestie. See you next time,
Dari