a few of our guilty pleasures (Tokays)

[Anthony Caponetto]

This first one is basically blue & gray or blue & black (depending on mood). Really cool gecko. The blue gets brighter and the black fades to kind of a pale gray-green color at night.

 

[Anthony Caponetto]

These three are as follows...

1 - Weird female with black spots and strange ground color...looks almost normal at times and then does this at night.

2 - Patternless - meaning no pattern? Pretty self-explanatory I guess.

3 - This one is gray with black bands...fully grown too, so the bands are permanent.

 

[Halley]

Those are all very nice!

 

[Anthony Caponetto]

These four are all of the same gecko, taken on the same day. He goes from almost jet black to having a really wild color/pattern scheme.

 

[Bob]

Nice tokays, I with they weren't so mean.

 

[Anthony Caponetto]

They are spunky and definitely not for the new owner, but getting barked at by a big attractive gecko kind of adds to their charm.

They're really not all mean, though. There are people who work with them to get them calm, but some are just naturally tame.

This is 'Big Mama'. She's a wild caught female that I got about 2 years ago. We didn't have to work with her at all. At first, I thought she was probably sick because she wasn't trying to bite anyone. Two years later, she's healthy as a horse and will crawl/hop around on you like a crested gecko. She's easy to pick out because she's the only one of our adults that will come out of her hide and rest in the open during the day.

Don't get me wrong, most tokays are really skittish and really defensive, but I think selective breeding of naturally docile tokays (like Big Mama) could do a lot for them.

A lot of species become more docile with each generation of captive breeding. This phenomenon occurs due to the fact that nature is designed to weed out the docile ones...they're the ones that get eaten first. Of course, we don't eat nice babies (I hope), so we raise them up and breed those animals together in captivity...and for the first time, those "nice" genes get passed on for several generations.

 

[AllGeckos]

nice her name does fit I have one I am workig with now trying to lure onto my hands with super worms any advice for handling them?

 

[Anthony Caponetto]

any advice for handling them?

I have no idea...that girl was always tame, so I had nothing to do with it.

They are smart geckos and people say you can tame them by working with them...of course, I've never really tried.

I guess the only handling advice I can give you is to think fast and wear leather gloves.

 

[Bob]

Big Mama is awsome, do you keep anything other gecko other than cresteds, leopards, gargoyles, and tokays.

 

[Golden Gate Geckos]

Great pics, Anthony! I have always been fascinated with the diverse beauty of the Tokay.

 

[PacHerp]

awww... Big Mama... Good luck with them Anthony, they are beautiful!

 

[geckoboy16]

nice pics and geckos!

 

[Anthony Caponetto]

Big Mama is awsome, do you keep anything other gecko other than cresteds, leopards, gargoyles, and tokays.

Thanks! She's a lot of fun to get out when I have visitors. Everyone is blown away by how cool it is to hold a big, tame Tokay.

I think that's about it for geckos. I do have a little mourning gecko colony (very cool little geckos!) and a red male chahoua that was produced here about 3 yrs ago...he's just a showpiece, though.

Counting babies and everything, I think we're almost up to 2,000 geckos with cresteds and leopards making up for 95% of that.

Then again, I've been down this road before, so I'm sure the Tokay group will grow as I start getting into the different morphs. lol

 

[Bob]

Wow 2,000 geckos is a lot, and they all are good looking too.

 

[MSMD]

Awesome Tokays, Anthony! I just love Big Mama! What a cool girl! :yes:

 

[nwheat]

Beautiful Tokays! I really like that patternless one.

 

[Select Gex]

Very pretty! That is neat to know you're working with them. I am going to be featuring an article on my new gecko blog about these soon!

 

[cliff_f]

Those are some really nice tokays.

 

[MSMD]

Are you going to start offering Tokays soon, Anthony? :wink3:

 

[Kristi23]

They're all really pretty! Ours isn't too mean, but she does bark at me. I think it's cute.