Northern Leaf-tailed Geckos

Driving to Cape Tribulation two nights ago, I was hit with the unmistakable stench of what the Guugu Yimithirr indigenous people (just up the coast) call yumu; a scummy residue of coral spawning in the shallows of the coral sea. On this same night, I located two Northern Leaf-tailed Geckos on the sides of nearby trees, at the same height off the ground and on the same side, most proximal to the direction of the onshore winds. I wondered if these two events were related.

It took me eight years of almost nightly searching to find my first Northern Leaf-tailed Gecko Saltuarius cornutus. Endemic to the rainforests of the Wet Tropics and almost invisible in their marbled discretion, they are Australia’s largest gecko.

The attached image shows the difference between the original tail (left) and the regenerated tail (middle). The camouflaged, lidless eye (right) shows a slit pupil which allows much more light when fully dilated and the very reflective tapetum requires that the gecko face downward to avoid detection from owls. In the event of an attack, the tail and hind legs and the inverted position increase the likelihood that the kill-shot will be directed at the strategically deceptive ‘recoverable’ end.

In relation to sea-borne scum, I was impressed by the size of a vast rubbish dump floating in the Pacific Ocean, which covers an area bigger than Australia, as reported in ABC News.