Isn’t this South American Marked Gecko a cutie pie? Would you believe something so cute is called a Homonota horrida? As if something so cute could be horrid.
When this lizard drawing was published in 1889, he bore the name Gymnodactylus horridus. These striped tail geckos are primarily found in Argentina and Paraguay. Sadly, while there appears to be a number of articles and photos of geckos in general, the H. horrida has gotten little attention.
I can only share that these geckos are nocturnal, lay 1-2 eggs and eat insects. Want to learn more? I’ll leave it to you to dig through the few scientific articles (quite a few in Spanish) to learn more about the South American marked gecko.
The drawing is from the Proceedings of the Scientific Meetings of the Zoological Society of London for the year 1889.
I’m thankful to the folks who scanned this old text and shared the scans with the world. This one is big. So big I am only showing a smaller version here. But, you can easily access the full-sized version by clicking on the one you see below.
This image is copyright free and in the public domain anywhere that extends copyrights 70 years after death or at least 120 years after publication when the original illustrator is unknown.
