Some of these are common misconceptions, some are plainly outlandish. All of them I have heard at shows or from friends in the hobby.
Video · 14 min watchWritten by Brian
The list mixes things I have been told at reptile shows with the strangest things friends in the gecko world have heard.
1. Touch the tail and it falls off
An exaggeration with some truth in it. Crested geckos do drop their tails as a defence when scared. They do not drop them just because you touch the tail. A gecko that is comfortable with you, and does not see you as a threat, keeps it. A relaxed gecko of mine will even hang from my finger by its tail.
Do not try that at home, and do not grab your gecko by the tail. Just do not panic if its tail ends up in your hand.
2. They will not drink standing water
I believed this for a long time: that you must mist the cage and they only lick drops off leaves. But a drop on a leaf is standing water too. Some reptile species only recognise moving water, and that seems to have attached itself to crested geckos.
The only real reason to spray a cage is humidity. I control humidity across the whole facility, so almost none of my geckos are sprayed. They drink from water dishes. If this were true, my roughly 2,500 geckos would be dead.
3. They get lonely and need company
Reptiles, most of them anyway, do not get lonely. People project their own feelings onto the gecko. Housing geckos together is not harmful if they get along, usually two females, with no bullying or one keeping the other off the food. Almost all my breeders live together most of the year. Just watch for problems.
4. Breeding is completely random
Crested gecko genetics are predictable. Plenty is still unknown, but when someone says a hatchling came out unexpected, usually it was an expected outcome an inexperienced breeder did not know about. The old forum joke that a Dalmatian and a Harlequin can hatch a banana is not real. My separate genetics video goes into what is known and what is not.
5. A female without a tail cannot breed
At a show in Kansas City, a man heard my explanation of a tailless female's price, then told me it was a scam because everyone knows a female cannot breed without her tail. He argued for five minutes. It is not true.
6. Only a male Lilly White makes Lilly White babies
A newer one: the claim that a visual Lilly White female lays only non-Lilly White offspring. It is a basic co-dominant trait. Either sex can produce visual Lilly Whites. My guess is it came from a breeder justifying very high prices for males.
7. They need high humidity all the time
Less common, but dangerous. They look exotic, so people assume tropical and constant humidity. They actually need humidity to rise and fall. For most people that means spraying morning and night, or once a day in a humid area, so it spikes and slowly falls. Constant high humidity makes their shed sticky so they cannot get it off, which over time can cause serious problems. A humid hide, which is basically a lay box, lets a gecko bury itself somewhere damper when it needs to before a shed.