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Welcome to The Animal Acoustic World
The tokay gecko (Gekko gecko L.) is the largest species in the Gekkonidae and is distributed in southeast Asia and southern subtropical area of China (that is why he speaks Chinese: "Honey, I love you"). Tokays are famous in loud vocalization with complex repertoire in order to attract mates during breeding seasons. The barn owl (Tyto alba) is a common animal in north America. She can catch prey in complete dark night. When she hears some sounds other animals made she knows the dinner will be served soon. I have been investigating the tokay gecko for a long time and I began to study the barn owl after I joined Carr lab.
Story of tokay gecko
Tokays are nocturnal geckos. They will come out of their hiding/resting places in the evening to look for food. They have a distinctive call, from which comes the name "tokay" - the call is said to sound like "to-kay" or variations thereof. Based on morphological features and sound structures, I tend to consider that there are two species or subspecies of tokay geckos. One only has brick red and white-grey spots on the back in spite of background colors, living most southeast Asia, named red spot tokay. Another one has many colors of spots but no red and usually black background which occurs in south China and north area of southeast Asia. I called it black tokay. You can click here to listen a call.
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Red spot tokay |
Black tokay |
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| Latin name Distribution Morphological features Behavior |
Gekko gecko. Thailand, South Vietnam, Indonesia etc.. Obvious sexual dimorphism in body size. Brick red and white-grey spots only. Spiny protuberances on the neck. Only male seems to vocalize. |
Gekko sinica. South China, North Vietnam etc.. Female almost has similar body size with male. Many other color spots. Obscure protuberances. Both male and female make calls. |
The mating call shows some different structures as bwllowings among populations from China (top/green and black), Thailand (middle/red) and Malaysia (bottom/blue).
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Rattle Phase |
Bi-syllable Phase |
3rd Phase |
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Waveforms |
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Spectrogram |
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