Depending on the species, geckos have a wide range of uses for their tails! For some, you may have seen a regrowing tail that has funny looking proportions, or maybe you’re familiar with the ever-popular “frog-butt” Crested Geckos! Let’s take a look at the most common uses (or lack of uses) for gecko tails!
Balance
Have you ever seen a cat fall off of something and quickly rotate their tail in a circle over and over again? Even though it may look silly, this is actually an instinctive behavior that cats have learned to help them right themselves to the perfect angle while they fall. This helps to ensure that they always land on their feet — and at an angle they can easily recover from. Similarly to cats, geckos and many other arboreal species, use their tails for balance while they fall!
Fat Storage
If you’ve been in any pet stores or visited any reptile shows or exotic animal expos, chances are, you’ve seen a Leopard Gecko or a Fat Tail Gecko at some point! These two species are some of the best examples of geckos that use their tails to store fat, one of them even has it in their name!
Extra Leg
Have you ever seen an opossum hanging from a tree or seen photos of a kangaroo with its tail on the ground? These are some of the more commonly thought of animals with a unique trait — they’re called prehensile tails. It’s a fancy word for saying an animal can use its tail like an arm! You’ll very frequently see geckos like the Sarasinorum or Chahoua using their very strong tails to hang from things in their enclosures.
Nothing!
If you’re familiar with Crested Geckos, you may know that they don’t regrow their tails if they drop them. That’s because unlike other gecko species, they don’t seem to use them for any particular use! They do not store fat in them, they don’t particularly balance better with or without them, and they are not able to hang from them.
As far as regrowing their tails, with limited research available into the matter that has been peer reviewed and is scientifically published, we have documentation that to the best of the scientific community’s knowledge, the only gecko that does not regrow their tail is the Crested Gecko. However, we learn new things every day and hundreds of species of animals are discovered every year, so that could always change in the future!
We believe that because the Crested Gecko does not use their tails for a particular reason, their bodies have learned that regrowing their tails after a drop, just wastes energy and resources they could be using for other bodily functions.