Geckos

There are several gecko species in Ghana in the family Gekkonidae. These group of lizards have suffered the highest persecution by humans perhaps after snakes. 

The unjustified killing of geckos continues in Ghana and other West African countries till date. People are of the believe that they are poisonous and that one will die if they fall in food, lick food, that are subsequently eaten by humans. That, if a human steps on them barefooted, that foot will swell until the person dies. That in killing them too, one has to take care not to break their tails for one to get a lot of blessings.

However, these lizards are harmless even though as crawling insect they can harbour disease causing organisms which can be transferred to humans just like any other animal (cats and dogs included) especially since most of them, geckos are commensal.

The supposed myths about them, is their ability to self-autotomise (that is to cut of parts of their tails). Autotomy......... Auto means self and tomy is cut so autotomy means self cutting. Many lizards have evolved these defensive method tail autotomy, so that they can evade capture by predators.

When being handled by predators, they cut off parts of their tails which wiggles to attract the predator to the wiggling tail whiles the main body of the lizard escapes.

Even though advanced in geckos other lizards such the skinks (snake lizards) and some snakes can also autotomise. 

There are interesting stories of geckos that shoot off their tails as weapons to injure/kill intruders in Ghana (unrealistic based on the nature of their fleshy tails----unproven yet).

There are also stories of geckos that glitter/shine, and that they mirror lightening strikes. Hence, when they are located somewhere, whenever, there is lightening during rains, they reflect the lightening onto nearby structures causing havoc (unrealistic and not yet proven).

They feed on insects and hence, they help us humans a lot in our homes by keeping the population of insect in check.

I will be updating this section with pictures of different species of geckos in Ghana with time

Most of the geckos in Ghana are in the genus Hemidactylus

Fig 1 Hemidactylus sp.

Fig 2 Hemidactylus albituberculatus

Fig 3 An autotomised tail of a gecko