Henkel's leaf-tailed gecko

Still sick. I saw Grace today she came to Champaign to assist with a friends table at our local gaming convention. She showed me a Brazilian tapir paladin she had been drawing at the convention, it turned out fairly well. She also suggested I look into last FM for looking into new music. So far the only problems she seems to have found with it being that it supplies you with a lot of Alien Sex Fiend (which I could probably do without) and randomly decides you like all music from a country, for example Grace was having a problem with it giving her a lot of Swedish disco.

Art 

Sick day

Animal

photo by Ben Smith

Henkel's leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus henkeli) is a strangely built arboreal 12 inch gecko from Madagascar and the island of Nosy Be'. They are nocturnal durning the day they scrunch themselves into a long oval head downward to avoid detection by predators. It is difficult to see in this picture but they also have these mossy little beards that hang off of their lower jaw. They can be quite variable in coloration, they are also somewhat sexually dimorphic with females being more grey and males being more brownish. Uroplatus geckos also have the most teeth of all living reptiles. Like other geckos they have vocal cords and when threatened will squeak loudly. They are becoming more threatened due to habitat destruction and collection by the pet industry. Though they have had reasonable success breeding this lizard in captivity so with an luck captive bred individuals will replace the wild caught individuals in the pet trade. 

Just for your amusement here is a Henkel's leaf tailed gecko "attacking" a reporter

Here is a picture that better shows the mossy beard