Consider the Gecko

The tiny gecko lizard seems to defy gravity. Proverbs 30:28 says,"the gecko lizard takes hold with its own hands and it is in the grand palace of a king.” In fact, scientists are awed by the ability of this little creature to scurry up walls and even across smooth ceilings without falling. How does the gecko do it? The secret is not in suction cups or in some type of glue product on his little feet. Instead, each of the gecko’s toes has a pad with ridges that contain thousands of hairlike protrusions. Each of these protrusions, in turn, has hundreds of filaments with saucer-shaped tips. The intermolecular force from all these filaments is enough to support more than the gecko’s body weight – even when it is skittering upside down across a glass surface. Intrigued by the gecko’s ability, researchers say that synthetic materials made to imitate the gecko’s feet could be used as a powerful adhesive.

What can be learned from the Gecko? Well in the Bible, at Proverbs 30:24-28 the Gecko is discussed. Here it says: 24 There are four things that are the smallest of the earth, but they are instinctively wise: 25 the ants are a people not strong, and yet in the summer they prepare their food; 26 the rock badgers are a people not mighty, and yet upon a crag is where they put their house; 27 the locusts have no king, and yet they go forth all of them divided into groups; 28 the gecko lizard takes hold with its own hands and it is in the grand palace of a king.

So we know that the Gecko has been around for centuries and centuries. Twice the Gecko was mentioned in the Bible; Once in Proverbs, as quoted above and once in the Bible book of Leviticus. Some Geckos have mated with other varieties of Geckos and so we see different kinds of Gecko’s, but all in all, a Gecko is a Gecko.

Geckos are one of the few reptiles or amphibians that are notorious for colonizing islands. Part of the reason for this is that some geckos have the amazing ability of pathogenesis. In essence, this means that one gecko, who successfully made it do an island can produce unfertilized eggs that later become a whole clan of female clones! That's pretty amazing isn't it! Its the same reason that the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park II and III were able to come back, even though they made them all girls!

In Hawaii there are currently 7 known species of geckos. Obviously, they are all brought here by someone, yet "those in the know" are unsure which may have been introduced by polynesians or other groups of people. Presently the suspected polynesian introductions include, the Morning Gecko (Lepidodactylus lugubris), the Stump-toed Gecko (Gehyra mutilata), the Small Tree Gecko (Hemiphyllodactylus typus), and the Fox Gecko (Hemidactylus garnottii). So, they conclude that the other three were brought in around 1940, which include the Common House Gecko (Hemidactylus frenatus), in the 1970's the Gold-dust Day Gecko (Phelsuma laticauda), and in the 1980's the Orange-spotted Day Gecko (Phelsuma guimbeaui).

There are a number of benefits in having a Gecko in your house. They keep children entertained, they wake you up at night and they are very handy to have when you want to scare girls.