Powerful and influential forces are evidently backing up the elusive search for what could be the world’s next awesome war accessory – the full-sized gecko suit – but it’s not just the military that’s got an interest in the vocal lizards, medical scientists are also studying them them.
There is a lot of interest in the tail the gecko discards to escape predators in a trick called autotomy. Not only does the gecko survive self-amputation but it grows back a new tail, a vital store of fats and nutrients in lean winter months.
A group of scientists at Adelaide University wondered if the gecko's recovery from what is evidently a major trauma, could have any implications for humans undergoing radical surgery such as masectomies and amputations. They focused on a common and painful condition called lymphoedema, which is brought on by damage to the lymphatic system causing swelling in parts of the body. The symptoms can occur in one or two limbs or in the trunk or guts. In extreme form the disease can cause elephantitis, an enormous swelling of the limbs.
When working properly the lymphatic system drains off excess proteins and fluids from body tissue and filters it through lymph nodes before dumping the cleaned up fluid into the blood stream in the lower back. Masectomies and other forms of surgery can damage or remove lymph nodes, leaving the body with a broken lymphatic system. So does autotomy. Other than noting the general sheer genius of re-growing an amputated body part, scientists reckoned that something clever must have been going on specifically with the lymphatic system, or else new tails would have come out all blotchy and bloated. They discovered a protein that the gecko increased in production after dropping its tail. This growth factor helped to regenerate the lymphatic system at the site of the trauma. The promising news for lymphoedema victims is that the gecko growth protein has a similar human equivalent.
The discovery hasn’t led to a cure, or human limb regeneration for that matter, but it’s a lead towards possible new treatments and a better understanding of how humans and other animals are held together.
A different study looked at how the tail whips into a manic frenzy after it undocks from the central nervous sytem of the gecko, to become a decoy to predators. The authors at Canada’s University of Calgary noted that the flipping movements of the detached tail didn’t fit the dying rhythmic convulsions expected. Instead, they were surprised by the complexity of the movement including flips, lunges and jumps as high as three centimetres in to the air. Not only that but the tail changed directions after hitting objects, in a sign that it was responding to stimuli as if it had a mind of its own.
The study authors suggest that there is a control centre at the end of the tail, furthest away from the brain, which kicks into action after severance from the main body. They said that understanding this back-up system could shed light on the mysterious spontaneous muscle movement observed in humans who have suffered from spinal cord injuries. And understanding that could in turn lead to more effective treatment.
Indeed geckos appear to hold important keys to our bionic future, and yet their secrets have been locked into their genes for a lot longer than the possible few million years of humanoid existence.
In 2008 a lizard limb embalmed in 100 million year old amber was decoded. It was the perfectly preserved lamellae on the toes that proved it belonged to a gecko. The find, from the tropical rain forests of today's Myanmar, put back their genesis by 40 million years in our eyes, placing them for the first time within the age of the dinosaurs. The ancestor of the beast that crawls the wall of a Hong Kong flat survived the trauma that wiped-out the velociraptors and the tyrannosaurus.
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| Credit: OSU |
But that leaves an unanswered question. Before modern building design and urban development, what surfaces were so smooth that any animal needed Van der Waal forces to survive? Even the smoothest rocks found in nature can’t compare with the uniform flatness of tiles, glass and steal. These materials only became ubiquitous in urban Hong Kong after the second World War. Until then the smoothest of rock faces had enough profile to give geckos and other animals strong claw-holds. And the smoothest pre-war house wall would have been a positive climbing frame compared to today’s gleaming tower blocks and floor to ceiling glass pains that geckos can tackle with ease.
The first gecko to climb up a glass wall must have been thrilled by the discovery of sticking powers that lay untapped to full potential in rough forests and rocky wildernesses. All along the evolutionary arms race had honed nature’s best climbers with minute advantages over rivals. The result was so refined that it couldn’t even be fully expressed until modern architects constructed a new world of shiny polished surfaces.
Is it because of all these incredible attributes that there are rumours of a “reptilian conspiracy”? I’ve just described my favourites: supreme predators, objects of faith with healing powers, self-perpetuating clones, supreme climbing champions of the animal kingdom, bio-inspiration for future human superpowers, self-amputating experts in regeneration, shedders of self-conscious intelligent body parts. But some people think there is even more to geckos than mere biology. There is a suggestion that geckos, along with other lizards and slithery snakes, are the true rulers of our planet.
David Icke, once the kind face of solid normality when he was a well-known sports presenter on British TV, is now one of the people warning the world against the “reptilian conspiracy.” Its not so much the lizards you see on your walls you need to worry about, although they’re probably in cahoots with the others. But some reptiles have actually used magic powers to take on human form to control the planet. You would have heard of many of them including count Dracula, all European royalty, and the Bush family that produced two presidents of the United States.
The evil reptilians interbreed only with their own kind and keep the rest of the world subjugated in a state of ignorance and fear. And if geckos have got anything to do with this dark scheme, with their talents they must be the ninja soldiers of the conspiracy, spies eaves dropping on us.
A nice metaphor perhaps for nepotism, corruption and cronyism, but taken literally it is insane of course. For starters, if they really are the all powerful masters of the universe, why do these beasts so often meet an abysmal ending in and around our homes. I’ve seen them with their heads stuck in discarded Band-Aids, trapped in plastic water bottles and flattened behind door hinges like crispy skeletal bookmarks. Sometimes they explode in plug sockets or they force themselves into tubes they can never leave.
Once I found a doomed individual stuck inside a cockroach trap made from glue-lined cardboard. The small gecko was gasping for life. It had struggled a few centimetres from its dead, separated tail, and it was shedding its own skin in a futile bid to escape the noxious adhesive. A swift execution with a sharp knife was the most merciful action I could take.
That one was certainly no master of the universe, or member of a ruling conspiracy. It was just an unlucky lizard that had awesome powers but still lived a precarious life in a hazardous world. In another case of misadventure a friend of mine had an expensive British brand ‘intelligent’ washing machine destroyed several times over by Hong Kong geckos that fried themselves on the motherboard that controlled the system. After repeatedly sending off for replacement parts he finally gave up on the high-tech that proved so alluring to the lizards and replaced it with a cheap conventional washer.
In some ways it is obvious that evolution hasn’t caught up with a relatively new habitat for these ancient reptilian wonders – our flats. After all they developed their superpowers millions of years before the first Fortress and IKEA stores opened in Hong Kong. But lizards may not be the only inhabitants struggling to come to terms with modern domesticity. We may not have been around as long, but hundreds of thousands of years in pre-electric, pre-plastic, pre-flat-pack days must have left an imprint. And that might explain some of the scrapes we get into ourselves, as we navigate the very recent physical and social environment we have constructed, for better or for worse.
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