青蓝柳趾虎

Males have a bright turquoise-blue body with a striking orange belly. Females and subordinate males tend to be greenish-bronze with bluish overtones and a cream or pale orange underside. From the time they’re hatched till they reach sexual maturity, both male and female young look like adult females, just tinier. Females retain the same colour throughout their life but males develop in one of two ways. Males kept solo and males that have dominant personalities will develop the famed electric blue colour. Non-dominant males look just like females and can only be differentiated by their femoral pores.

To court a female, the male flattens his body, puffs out his black throat patch and bobs his head. After courtship, females usually lay one or two eggs, every four weeks during the breeding season. An egg-gluer, she sticks her eggs onto the surface of any suitable substrate she can find, taking pains to ensure they’re hidden from sight. The white, hard-shelled eggs may take anywhere from 50 days to three months to hatch.

This diurnal gecko is found only in Tanzania's Kimboza and Ruvu Forest Reserves, where it dwells exclusively on pandan plants, which are associated with swamps or limestone within the forest. Each plant usually has a male, one or more females and several juveniles living among its thick stalks and above-ground roots. Because of this, the geckos were easily targeted by poachers. In 2005, when the first electric blue geckos appeared on the market, reptile enthusiasts worldwide fell in love with their electric blue colour. An alarming 15% of the wild population was illegally removed and exported for the pet trade between 2005 and 2009.