Gecko toe pads show strong adhesion on various surfaces yet remain remarkably clean around everyday contaminants. An understanding of how geckos clean their toe pads while being in motion is essential for the elucidation of animal behaviours as well as the design of biomimetic devices with optimal performance. Here, we test the self-cleaning of geckos during locomotion. We provide, to our knowl...

BACKGROUND Geckos are among the most species-rich reptile groups and the sister clade to all other lizards and snakes. Geckos possess a suite of distinctive characteristics, including adhesive digits, nocturnal activity, hard, calcareous eggshells, and a lack of eyelids. However, one gecko clade, the Eublepharidae, appears to be the exception to most of these 'rules' and lacks adhesive toe pads...

Geckos with adhesive toe pads rapidly climb even smooth vertical surfaces. We challenged geckos (Hemidactylus garnotii) to climb up a smooth vertical track that contained a force platform. Geckos climbed vertically at up to 77 cm s(-1) with a stride frequency of 15 Hz using a trotting gait. During each step, whole body fore-aft, lateral and normal forces all decreased to zero when the animal at...

The gecko adhesive system is dependent on weak van der Waals interactions that are multiplied across thousands of fine hair-like structures (setae) on geckos' toe pads. Due to the requirements of van der Waals forces, we expect that any interruption between the setae and substrate, such as a water layer, will compromise adhesion. Our recent results suggest, however, that the air layer (plastron...

Directional arrays of branched microscopic setae constitute a dry adhesive on the toes of pad-bearing geckos, nature's supreme climbers. Geckos are easily and rapidly able to detach their toes as they climb. There are two known mechanisms of detachment: (1) on the microscale, the seta detaches when the shaft reaches a critical angle with the substrate, and (2) on the macroscale, geckos hyperext...

Geckos in the Western Hemisphere provide an excellent model to study faunal assembly at a continental scale. We generated a time-calibrated phylogeny, including exemplars of all New World gecko genera, to produce a biogeographical scenario for the New World geckos. Patterns of New World gecko origins are consistent with almost every biogeographical scenario utilized by a terrestrial vertebrate ...

In this paper, we compare some of the neural strategies for sound localization and encoding interaural time differences (ITDs) in three predatory species of Reptilia, alligators, barn owls and geckos. Birds and crocodilians are sister groups among the extant archosaurs, while geckos are lepidosaurs. Despite the similar organization of their auditory systems, archosaurs and lizards use different...

The striped gecko (Hoplodactylus stephensi Robb 1980) is one of the rarest and most restricted of the New Zealand lizards. Until now it has been found only on Stephens Island in western Cook Strait and Maud Island in Pelorus Sound. The species is strongly nocturnal and primarily arboreal, inhabiting shrublands and forest remnants. In March 1997 an unusual and distinctive gecko was found in a ho...

SUMMARY. With in vivo observations and time measurements, we have demonstrated that living geckos display adhesion times following Weibull statistics and the Weibull shape and scale parameters can be used to describe quantitatively the statistics of the adhesion times of different geckos (male or female), materials (glass or PMMA), and interfaces (virgin or machined PMMA surfaces). 1 INTRODUCTI...

To investigate determinants of symmetry of the monocular horizontal optokinetic reaction (hOKR) in vertebrates, we performed behavioural studies in diurnal foveate, as well as nocturnal afoveate geckos. During binocular viewing hOKR gain was equal for movement to the left or right, during monocular stimulation, all afoveate geckos (Lepidodactylus lugubris, Gekko gecko, Eublepharis macularius) a...