Image of the Day: This Gecko Won’t Hold His Tongue
Photographer Isak Pretorius spent several days following gecko tracks in Namibia to capture a gecko licking the morning dew off its eyeball says the Telegraph in a review of the cutest animal pics of 2011. And though it likely brings a smile to your face like it did to ours, it also brings into focus a more sobering topic. According to NPR, some lizard populations are going extinct and the cause, scientists suspect, is climate change. This may seem counterintuitive seeing as though reptiles live in some of the warmest habitats on Earth, but a team of scientists found that in the areas where lizards were struggling to survive, those locations were, on average, several degrees warmer during the daytime than normal. And the increase in time the lizards then needed to stay in the shade directly took away from the time they could, and normally would, be foraging for food.
Credit: Isak Pretorius / National News and Pictures
