we've all seen crested geckos and leopard geckos right really popular great pets and for good
reason too well maybe you decided that you want to start keeping some grecos but not necessarily
those you want something a little bit different you kind of know what you're doing or you want
to get into something a little bit different but you've never kept them before well i have five
animals that i think would be a good intro into keeping geckos that aren't just kind of your bread
and butter animals and this is five inexpensive geckos that also make good pets for beginners
intermediates or experts and that goes for keeping these animals as well as people who have never
kept a pet or even people who have kept reptiles you know but not necessarily geckos like i do
a lot of snakes if you're like me and you like snakes but you're interested in these other ones
and you want something a little bit different well here we go we'll get started on this so the first
one i think is really cool and that i actually probably see the most often is the flying gecko
so the flying gecko is a really cool small little gecko from southeast asia that gets its name for
pretty obvious reason they don't actually fly there's as far as i'm aware there's no such
thing as an actual flying lizard or a flying snake they're more like gliding parachuting type animals
right well what they do is they have very flappy loose skin that will expand out when they jump
from limb to limb from tree to tree whatever may have you that will spread out slow their descent
down and make it look like they're flying or gliding over to different places they show up
on importers tables quite often like you know the big three letter name that we all know and love uh
the different reptile shows they are on those type of tables quite often you know very inexpensive so
the problem with those is their imports and so unfortunately you have to kind of watch them a
little bit but these guys are really cool they don't need to be kept in very large spaces but
if you can they will certainly utilize them you just may not necessarily see them doing that
they are nocturnal they do like a little bit of a small basking spot nothing crazy like the high 80s
so a little bit more than you would have like a crested gecko or something like that but a little
basking spot like a little daylight bulb is all you'd really need for them give them lots of cover
give them something that looks a little bit more naturalistic because they do camouflage really
well their tails while probably aid in gliding those really big fanned out tails and hands while
they do help probably with the descent and gliding around they also make really great adaptations for
camouflage and so if you give them like a really cool cork bark background lots of sticks lots of
naturalistic looking or even just straight bio active things to interact with and hide and hide
in and amongst you're going to have a much happier healthier more comfortable gecko to where when you
do get to actually see them they look really well they are insectivores so no pangea mix for these
guys but they eat like getting a wide variety of like small to pinhead crickets small meal worms
little dubias that you might get them confident enough to eat off your hands they're not very
handleable but they do look really cool and they're fun to keep i always thought it'd be
really fun to get like one of those tall like wide exoterras and just keep a small group of
them and like heavily plant two sides of them and see if they would sit there and like glide
back and forth haven't been able to do that yet but i always thought that'd be really really cool
so this next one is one that i actually just recently acquired and i'm really
excited to play with a little bit and that is the crocodile gecko or the moorish gecko
so am i say play with they're actually not super handleable these guys are really cool at least i
certainly think so they kind of get their name from their almost like crocodile looking uh
exterior they have a lot of kind of bumpy rough texture to their back scalations and even their
tails are almost a little bit spiky at the base which what they get their name the crocodile
gecko these guys are found all throughout the mediterranean from like north africa
up into southern france and greece and that whole little area so when i was doing research on these
guys both before i got it as well as doing this there was a little bit of conflicting information
because a lot of the places where they are it's fairly rocky and kind of dry but being in the
mediterranean the humidity is also just a lot higher too so you end up this kind of weird like
well how do we do that and so basically in captivity we've figured out that to do fairly
well is they are arboreal they don't have the sticky pads by sticky pads i mean they don't have
the pads with the tiny little fibers that make electrostatic shocks which is why they're able
to cling to little objects but we're not getting again in this video they do have regular little
fingers with little claws there are avid climbers but they can't climb up glass so if you give them
a nice tall setup like you know in 18 by 18 or 29 or something like that for a full grown adult
with lots of rocks and barks and like cork bark and sticks that are offset at an angle
they will absolutely utilize that and then you can kind of section off one hot spot because they do
need a little bit of uvb they are they're kind of gropuscular they say they're more active at
night but they're absolutely found out basking and moving around in the early parts of the day in the
evening as well so give them a little bit of uvb on like one side give them a little bit of a warm
spot of like 90 as a basking spot and the other part make sure that it's a little bit cooler and
has plenty of humid hides i would recommend maybe doing a lot of a fairly you know fairly thick
substrate of a humidity holding substrate of like ecoworth topsoil that type of thing maybe throwing
a little bit of play sand as to kind of keep a little sandy and airaid a little bit but they do
really well is kind of a little bit of back and forth they're fairly easy gecko to to maintain
once you get their setup of having both a small basking spot as well as high humidity they get not
quite as big as a 2k gecko probably about seven eight inches long and they can be handled a little
bit but they're not gonna like bulldog you like a tokay will well they'll just sit there and go
at you and then latch on once they get a hold of you but they are still a really cool gecko
after that let's move on to some more terrestrial ones so we have a panther gecko these guys are
really cool they've actually been in the hobby for a while under a different name
and that is the pictus gecko and i remember reading about these when i very first started
to get into reptiles just in general and they kind of just faded away and i'm going to guess
the reason is because of the popularity of the leper gecko but these guys are really cool and
arguably are just as good if not a better beginner reptile lizard specifically than a leopard gecko
their only downfall is they're not super well handleable and that's because they have a tendency
to be a little bit of skittish and a little bit flighty another name for these guys are actually
called the big head of gecko which is really the only way that you can kind of easily tell
the difference between males and females yes you can take a look at their you know femoral
pores and things like that but the males have a much larger head than the females and even then
they still have really big heads hence big head of geckos these guys are actually really really cool
they're found in madagascar um as are a lot of the animals that we have in the reptile hobby honestly
um they are ground-dwelling terrestrial you won't ever really see them up in the trees at all
they like to hide under rocks under you know falling over trees under the leaf litter
during the day and then one at night and they're found kind of in like the central northern part
of us of madagascar and then at night they'll come out and hunt for all sorts of different
little bugs and little creepy crawlies like that these guys have a wide variety of just
naturally occurring patterns they can be different colors they can be striped they
can not be striped almost kind of like a blotchy color they're really really cool geckos um and
they don't get very large either they're a lot smaller they probably only get about six inches
ish might be the biggest they get so they can do fairly well in a smaller tank like a 10 20 gallon
aquarium and you know give them a little bit of a little basking spot nothing too crazy um very
similar setup to i would say like an african fat tail gecko where they still need heat they still
need it to be a nice little basking swallow but try but they definitely need that humid
hide so if you kind of treat them like an african fatal gecko you probably won't go wrong with that
um the other thing with these guys is that supposedly they are incredibly prolific breeders
once they hit sexual maturity and the breeding seasons start supposedly they will lay
quite a few eggs every two weeks for the entire breeding season so supposedly they do very well as
well as their eggs are like tiny little ping pongs they're spherical and they're hard most like but
most reptile eggs you know they're they're kind of soft and kind of squish a little bit they're
more leathery they don't have that hard shell to maintain the water um because you know when
they're hard they maintain water they won't lose that they don't lose hydration but these
guys they're hard so they're just kind of a really cool little gecko that i think are really fun um
this next one is one that i've never messed with but i know they're really cool and that is the
yellow-headed dwarf gecko so these geckos actually come from the new world down in south america
they don't have pads so they don't like to climb on everything but they are avid climbers
usually found amongst rocks in and amongst like fallen over limbs and things like that
they do like it a little warm so if you're in there you know they're dwarf geckos they
don't get very large so something like a 10 or 20 gallon tank again these are all the smaller geckos
you know very first getting into it that so that's why these work very well as
kind of you know dipping your toes into the water a little bit they don't get very large but hence
the dwarf part but they do like a little bit warmer so like 75 to 85 so a little bit warmer
than room temp but we're not talking like bearded dragon temps right so maybe like a little heat
pad or something on the bottom if you're going to give them uvb make sure that you know you
give them plenty of shade because they will be active you know still the grow puscular reptile
but you know make sure you give them you know a lot of shade and a lot of cover to get not have
direct uvb even if it's a lighter amount of uvb versus like you know the 5.0 and the 10.0
they are really cool they will eat all sorts of like little pinhead crickets they're really fun
um that also being said they are sexually dimorphic similar to the pictus or the panther
geckos but a little bit more traditionally how we think like a mallard duck where the males
are really brightly colored that's that yellow head that blue black body bright yellow orange
head female they're kind of drab they're more of like a whitish gray but they're still really
cool and you can easily have a small breeding group of them and i think that'd be really cool
to just every once in a while you just see like a tiny little yellow head just like dart out really
quick grab a little pin and cricket or a little mill worm and then dash back under the cover
that's really cool and i like to see those kind of more natural behaviors of these animals versus
not as great and so when you have a smaller animal it gives you more of an opportunity to go
a little to give them a little bit more space and get a little more creative with their enclosures
to maybe try to get some of those more natural behaviors which is really fun to see before you
kind of start to go really big um and then the last one i think is dangerous and criminally
underrated and that is the banded gecko bandit geckos are really cool and have been around in the
hobby for a very very long time probably longer than the pictus gecko these guys are native to the
united states they're found in like the southwest united states down into mexico and even central
america and they're basically look like many new world leopard geckos they keep their banding like
the babies they don't get kind of modeled with the little bumps and stuff as a lot of the different
leopard gecko sub species get but they stay pretty small you know like four or ish inches is about
the biggest you'll get the only downside of these guys is they're not super handleable
they will squeak croak and scream at you and they'll let you know that they don't like being
handled but they are really cool and honestly i've always liked the kind of more deserty arid
enclosure setups where you can sit there and use like the pea gravel and the really cool deserty
looking ones and you can kind of make little rock shells and stuff and i think those look really
really cool and a banana gecko is one that you can absolutely do that these guys are found fairly
readily down in that part of the area you'll see them at night like in people's houses if you're
kind of out in the boonies a little bit crossing roads just hunting for all sorts of little insects
and stuff they're really cool there's a wide variety of different colors and patterns because
there's a fair number of subspecies they can't really be collected anymore in the field in a lot
of the places where they're found but they've been in the hobby for a while and so there are some
select people out there that held on to them and are still breeding them and you're allowed to
have them they just can't be fuel collected anymore a lot of them do come out of nevada
which is where they are naturally occurred where they are allowed to be field collected but they
do breed fairly easily in captivity similar to leopard echoes maybe just a little bit more effort
needs to be put in but if you're really interested in oh wait i i totally forgot something these guys
have a really other cool adaptation that i want to talk about i don't know how i forgot about this
these guys eat scorpions so if you live in places like this the little baby scorpions or the smaller
ones they eat them which is great that's like hey more reason to keep them around right and
in addition to that in addition to the you know the screaming and the barking and the croaking
they will straight up imitate a scorpion where they will sit there and they'll like spread out
and hunch down and they'll throw their tail up over their back like a scorpion's tail and they'll
just assume this defensive position and then like still scream and croak and squeak at you a little
bit they look really cool i just wanted to say that i just like all the little fun adaptations
that these guys have so i don't know how i almost forgot about that but if you like this
list or you know want to know about anything else please let me know email me at jzs j--z s because
somebody has jz reptiles and they won't give me it back um jzs@reptiles gmail.com i'll answer any
questions to the best of my ability that i can any comments if you want to know anything more
have anything really cool to contribute just keep it civil is all i ask put it down in the
comments i'll do my best to get back at you hope you enjoyed the video if there's anything else
you want to see please let me know hope you're having a great day and we'll check you next time