These 60-Year-Old Geckos Could Be the Oldest Yet

Brucie-Baby is slender and bony, and Antoinette is sixty-four. Their eyes still shine with vitality, but their skin is looser than it was when they were young.

But these aren’t just any sexagenarians we’re talking about; these are geckos, believed to be the world’s oldest on record, discovered on a small island in New Zealand.

The team that discovered the two Waitaha geckos on Motunau Island, off the coast of the South Island, included Marieke Lettink, a specialist in reptiles and amphibians. She described it as an “exciting” moment and said that realizing “that these animals are older than us and still out there doing their thing” was sobering.

They were discovered on the island during a five-year survey. Since we don’t know how long they can live, it’s also worthwhile to go back in five years. In every trip we’ve had, the oldest gecko we’ve ever caught is invariably older than us,” Lettink remarked.

The team usually catches a few hundred geckos over a few days by setting up a grid of traps on the small island during each inspection. The team also treks in the dark with headlamps to search for geckos perched on leaves and bushes because the geckos come out at night.

Since the late naturalist Tony Whitaker started marking geckos on the island with a technique known as toe clipping in the 1960s, the surveys have been conducted. This technique entails cutting a specific number of the geckos’ toes, each of which has a distinct pattern. The Department of Conservation in New Zealand no longer employs the technique.

Lettink was able to identify the lizards thanks to Whitaker’s markings on Antoinette and Brucie-Baby, which are named after Whitaker and fellow naturalist Bruce Thomas.

It reminded me of Tony, who initiated the project. “It was a very moving moment,” she remarked.

Since both geckos were fully grown at the time of marking, their ages may be even greater than the 60 and 64 years listed.

That’s a lot longer than the typical gecko’s lifespan, which is only around ten years. Additionally, this finding puts Waitaha geckos at the top of the list of long-living reptiles, the majority of which are much larger and more well-known.

“With species like the iguanas and the large Komodo dragons—you know, really big lizards that are quite famous,” Lettink stated, “it has bypassed all the older lizards.” “And it’s a plain, unimpressive brown gecko that’s not well-known at all.”

It may have survived for so long for several reasons, chief among them being that Motunau Island is devoid of predators and none of the invasive species that have wiped out native fauna on mainland New Zealand.

Because of the success of reptile survival in areas free of predators, environmentalists across are working to create safer sanctuaries, such as enclosing a fenced area to keep predators out and removing invasive predators from within.

But mice populations may flourish if the ecology is skewed in that direction. Some organizations have established special sanctuaries exclusively for lizards and geckos since they can prey on them, which is another issue, Lettink said.

According to a news release from the Department of Conservation’s Biodiversity Ranger Kaitlyn Leeds, who was part of the survey team with Lettink, there are additional elements that contribute to their longevity, such as the island lifestyle and the mild climate.

The team had only seen Antoinette once, roughly ten years prior, and they thought that would be the last time. Lettink stated, “And here, ten years later, they look no different – they’re still going.”

She is optimistic that they may be able to locate a few more of the original geckos that were tagged in the 1960s by the time of the next survey, which is in five years. Better yet, there may be a large number of elder geckos that have not yet been located. She remarked, “That would be exciting.”

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