AMAZING
ANIMALS
AN ADULT
GOLD-DUST DAY
GECKO IS ABOUT
AS LONG AS A
TOILET-PAPER
TUBE.CLAIRE SIMEONE © THE MARINE MAMMAL CENTER (GECKO ON PHONE); PETLINDMITRY / SHUTTERSTOCK
10 NAT GEO KIDS^ • AUGUST 2019 (GECKO, MAIN); NEWSPIX / TREVOR PINDER (GRAEME); ANDY ROUSE / GETTY IMAGES (GORILLA)Gecko
Prank
Makes
Calls
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
When veterinarian Claire
Simeone received nearly a
dozen mysterious, silent
phone calls from the Marine
Mammal Center’s Hawaiian
monk seal hospital, Ke Kai Ola,
she worried it might be an
emergency. But back at the
clinic, nobody admitted to call-
ing her. So Simeone, who’s also
the hospital’s director, searched
through each room until she
found the prank caller: a gold-dust day gecko lounging on the
touch screen of a telephone.
After sneaking into the
hospital, the lizard was proba-
bly attracted by the bright
screen. Then the cold-blooded
creature stuck around to soak
up the phone’s warmth, reptile
expert Ron Tremper says. The
gecko’s feet—covered in tiny
hairs that help it grip leaves
and branches—pressedGOLD-DUST
DAY GECKOagainst the touch screen like
human fingertips. “Every time it
moved its feet, the gecko called
another person—including me,”
Simeone says.
Simeone eventually moved the
jokester outside, where it can sit
in warm spots—without ringing
up expensive phone bills.
—Elizabeth Hilfrank