[Saskia]

Hello everyone!!

I have had geckos for close to 10 years, and have read as much as possible about them, and yet I still find new interesting things! This happened this year:

I hached 14 healthy babies from may until july this year, and one of them has caught my attention, all of them were incubated in the same incubator, all at he same temperature in order to get 100% females... one of the babies (hatched in june) has shown a very unusual growth rate, she eats properly, in the beginning she only ate roaches and grasshoppers (she didn´t like mealworms at first), and now she eats anything just fine (I feed a variety of mealworms, roaches and grasshoppers), even with calcium and vitamin dust once or twice a week, she eats every other day just like all of her siblings, she looks very active, poos and sheds just fine, has a nice plumpy tail but weighs close to half what she should! She is not thin, just very very small, anyone who sees her thinks she is 2-3 months old, but she is actually 6, her clutchmate is normal size, all the other babies are aproaching the 40 grames now, they all are housed separately in very similar 11 gallon tanks, all of them have UTH, humid hides, are kept in paper towels, have permanent acces to fresh water, plain calcium dish, eat every other day, dusting their food 2x a week, all their settings are fine! But she is 14 grames!!!
Once again she is NOT thin, just doesn´t seem to be growing, but in any other sense she looks perfect, acts perfect, eats perfect, poops perfect, sheds perfect, I hardly ever handle her because she is a little more skittish than the others (still acts like a hatchling, while the others are a lot calmer)...

So it has crossed my mind that she could be a DWARF GECKO???? I know giants were a spontaneous mutation, so why not?? What do you think?? I´d like to post some pictures, but I haven´t figured out how to take a picture where she shows her size, I mean, because if she´s alone in te picture she looks like any other leo, I have to compare her against something so you can see how tiny she is. Any ideas?? Regarding morph she is a aberrant snow (just like all my clutches this year).

What do you think?????

[Crocodidlian]

Try to take a picture of her sitting next to a ruler so we can tell how small she is. How cool to find an apparently dwarf gecko.

[Saskia]

I´ll try doing that, the thing is she is very skittish and it´s difficult to take a picure because she won´t stay still! Also I´d like to take a picture comparing her to her clutchmate, or any other sibling so you can see the big size difference, perhaps I could use the ruler with her and after with another sibling (same ruler) so you can compare

[MauricesExoticPets]

Use graph paper as a substrate, your normal graph paper should be 5mm (I assume, but it could be different).

In any case graph paper is fairly easy to get a good picture that shows size without worry of gecko placement close to a ruler.

Just note the graph size and all will be good.

Maurice Pudlo

[acpart]

THere are a number of people on various forums who have produced dwarf geckos, including one who said that a geneticist had confirmed it. As I understand it, not only do they tend to be small, but also have shorter, rounder bodies with a relatively big head. They are often healthy, but it would probably be dangerous to breed them.

Aliza