Reptilia · Squamata
Gekko geckoLinnaeus, 1758
Tuctoo
Photograph by Gerard Chartier, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons
A tree-dwelling, nocturnal, meat-eating gecko from the Oriental region, reaching 220 mm snout to vent.
Also called Tokay Gecko, Tokeh-tokeh.
Reptilia › Squamata › Gekkonidae › Gekko
- Grows to
- 220mm
- greatest recorded
- Eats
- Carnivorous
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Lives up to
- 23.5years
Longer than 100% of all geckos anyone has measured.
The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 23 to 220 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.
What is known
42 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.
Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.
Standing in the world
- Still living
- Extant
- Conservation status
- Least Concern
- Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
- 2017
The animal itself
- Limbs
- Four legs
- Venomous
- No
- Fangs
- None
- Longest recorded life
- 23.5years
- Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradientmeasured
- 26.8–27.8°C80–82 °F
Carey and Judge 2000, De Magalhaes & Costa 2009, Werner et al. 1993: 20 years, 1 month; Slavens and Slavens 1999: 23.5
Size
- Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
- 220mm8.75 in
- Length snout to vent · adult female mean
- 129.7mm5 in
- Largest female · snout to vent
- 129.7mm5 in
- Hatchling length · snout to vent
- 39.5mm1.5 in
- Largest juvenile · snout to vent
- 45mm1.75 in
- Body mass · greatestcomputed
- 168g5.9 oz
- Body mass · a typical adult
- 54.13g1.9 oz
- Body mass · adult female, meanmeasured
- 72.3g2.6 oz
- Body mass at hatchingmeasured
- 2.85g0.1 oz
Shai Meiri, unpublished
snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length
computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed
AnAge rates this record "acceptable"
How it lives
- Diet
- Carnivorous
- How it hunts
- Mixed
- Active
- Nocturnal
- Where it lives
- Arboreal
- Habitat
- Forest
- Biome
- Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Region
- Oriental
- Mainland or island
- Mainland
- Highest it lives · above sea level
- 1100m
- Range size
- 4,656,213km²
Arthropods and small vertebrates (lizards, rodents birds and snakes, Bauer 1990, Das 2011, Grismer 2011, geckos, Auffenberg 1980, rats and lizards: Weterings and Weterings 2018) and eggs (Vassilieva et al. 2016), see also Kastle et al. 2013, a sunbird (Sy and Tanalgo 2018), arthropods (Gogoi et al. 2018)
Active foraging / sit and wait but active when food scarce (Zug 2013)
Nocturnal - but basks (Ahmed et al. 2009), calling say and night (Das et al. 209), nocturnal (e.g., Das and Bhattacharjee 2005, Vassilieva et al. 2016, Gogoi et al. 2018, Zug and Mulachy 2019)
Arboreal and Saxicolous / arboreal (e.., Das and Bhattacharjee 2005, Vassilieva et al. 2016, Gogoi et al. 2018, Zug and Mulachy 2019)
240-900 (Kastle et al. 2013)
Breeding
- Reproduction
- Oviparous
- Sex decided by
- Genes, XX/XY
- Average clutch
- 2eggs
- Eggs or young per clutch
- 1–3eggs
- Mean clutch
- 2eggs
- Clutches in a year
- 7per year
- Clutches a year
- 2–12per year
- First breeds at
- 9–18months
usually 2, uncommonly 1 or 3 (Zug 2013, Vassilieva et al. 2016), 2 (Das and Das 2017, Jenssen and Sy 2022)
Naming and history
- Suborder
- Sauria
- Infraorder
- Gekkota
- Subspecies
- Gekko gecko gecko (LINNAEUS 1758) Gekko gecko azhari MERTENS 1955
- Described by
- Linnaeus
- Moved to another genus · since it was first described
- Yes
- Described in
- 1758
- Type locality
- Indonesia
Keeping one
2 ft 11 in × 21.5 in × 2 ft 11 in(88 × 55 × 88 cm)
Minimum length × width × height, for one animal. Bigger is always better.
The standard sizes climbing species at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times snout-vent length.
Lives in vegetation, so height and climbing structure matter more than floor space.
Mindestanforderungen an die Haltung von Reptilien (Sachverständigengutachten), German Federal Ministry for Nutrition, Agriculture and Forestry, Animal Welfare Division, 10 January 1997. The standard states these floor areas are recommendations rather than binding limits.
From this animal’s own snout-vent length of 8.75 in (220 mm), at 4 × 2.5 × 4 times it, following the German federal welfare standard — how this is worked out.
In a laboratory thermal gradient this species settled at 80–82 °F (26.8–27.8 °C).
Preferred body temperature, recorded in a laboratory gradient where the animal could choose freely. A measurement of the animal, not a setting for a thermostat.
Feeding
A prey item should be no wider than the space between the animal's eyes.
Widely used across reptile husbandry references. The stated reason is that the gap approximates the width of the throat, so wider prey is associated with impaction. This is established practice, not a measurement.
19kJ per day
Worked out for an animal of 168 g, the heaviest recorded for Tuctoo — so it is the top of the range, not a figure for a particular animal. Weigh yours and the number will be lower.
An upper estimate, not a feeding target, and not veterinary advice. The equation covers only what an animal burns staying alive, so a growing, gravid or recovering animal needs more — and it was measured on wild animals, which move far more than one in an enclosure. Body condition and a vet who knows the species are what a feeding decision should rest on. Where this comes from.
Morphs
0 with peer-reviewed genetics behind them, 4 resting on breeder consensus. Most references present both with the same confidence.
What each pairing produces → · Two genes at once →
- Calicobreeder consensus
Patches of unpigmented skin over the base colour, varying widely between animals.
- Colour intensitybreeder consensus
How blue the ground is and how red the spots are. A tokay also changes colour with mood, temperature and light, so what is heritable here is the animal's range rather than a fixed appearance.
- Granitebreeder consensus
Spotting broken into dense fine speckling across the whole body.
- Patternlessbreeder consensus
The orange and white spotting absent, leaving an even blue-grey animal.
What nobody knows
These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.
- — Length snout to vent · adult male mean
- — Length snout to vent · adult mean
- — Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
- — Female length · mean, nose to tail
- — Length nose to tail · adult male mean
- — Length nose to tail · adult mean
- — Largest male · snout to vent
- — Largest female · shell length
- — Largest male · shell length
- — Hatchling length · nose to tail
- — Largest juvenile · shell length
- — Egg length
- — Egg width
- — Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
- — Eats arthropods
- — Eats vertebrates
- — Eats plant matter
- — How the young develop
- — Gestation or incubation
- — Hatchling length · smallest recorded
- — Hatchling length · largest recorded
- — Age at first breeding · female
- — Mature from · youngest recorded
- — Mature by · oldest recorded
- — Size at maturity · smallest recorded
- — Size at maturity · largest recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
- — Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
- — Colour on the back
- — Pattern on the back
- — Pupil
- — Population trend
- — Red List criteria
- — Active season · shortest recorded
- — Active season · longest recorded
- — Density · lowest recorded
- — Density · highest recorded
- — Home range · largest recorded
- — Active in
- — Lowest it lives · above sea level
Others in Gekkonidae
Take this data
Everything on this page is available as data under CC BY 4.0 — use it freely, credit it, no permission needed.
This species as JSON · the whole dataset
Cite this page
The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia (2026). Gekko gecko. Retrieved 2026-09-08, from https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gekko-gecko
@misc{gekko_gecko_2026,
title = {Gekko gecko},
author = {{The Reptile & Amphibian Encyclopedia}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.allanglescreatures.com/species/gekko-gecko}
}Sources
- Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
- Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
- Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.
- AnAge, Human Ageing Genomic Resources (de Magalhães et al.), used under CC BY 3.0.