What Do Crested Geckos Eat in the Wild?

Crested geckos are among the most popular pet lizards in the world, and it’s not hard to see why: they’re hardy, often tolerate handling well, have adorably large eyes with an eyelash-like fringe, velvet-soft scales, and they’re easy to feed. While most pet lizards require a relatively demanding diet of gut-loaded live insects, nutrient-dense greens and vegetables, or both, crested geckos can be kept solely on a diet of reconstituted meal replacement powder. However, as effective as we know it to be, is that meal replacement powder (known as crested gecko diet, or CGD) truly best practice? For the answer to that question, we have to look at crested geckos’ natural history: the environmental factors which shaped this species’ physiology. 

Wild Diet 

Crested geckos (Correlophus ciliatus) are omnivorous, which means that they eat both animal and plant matter. This is a highly flexible survival strategy in the animal kingdom because it allows the animal to get by on whatever’s available at the moment. On Grande Terre and the Isle of Pines, the specific New Caledonian islands where crested geckos can be found, there’s plenty of invertebrates, vertebrates, fruits, flowers, and leaves available for potential munching. But what are the geckos actually eating? 

Animals

A 2007 publication by Herve Saint-Dizier mentions the stomach contents of wild crested geckos, and in the animals surveyed, there was found 49.6% insect matter and 20.08% vertebrate matter. Specifically: 

Note that this list includes climbing insects (beetles, crickets, locusts, caterpillars, roaches) and flying insects (butterflies, beetles, flies), both of which would be readily available up in the trees and branches where crested geckos like to hang out. The roaches may be a bit of a surprise if you’re only familiar with Blaptica dubia, the dubia roach, but several types of New Caledonian roaches have been observed to congregate under flaking tree bark and in narrow tree hollows (Vosjoli et al., 2003). 

Vertebrates represent a relatively small portion of wild crested gecko nutrition, but they tend to be particularly nutrient-dense compared to insect prey, which makes them significant. When you’re a wild crested gecko with no guarantees about your next meal, the opportunity to nab a high-calorie, high-nutrient lizard or young rodent can mean the difference between successful breeding this year…or not. 

Another point of significance in this list is that most of the prey represented are fairly low in fat.  

Plants 

The same 2007 publication mentioned above found: 

Unfortunately, the paper does not mention exactly which fruits and seeds the geckos had eaten. However, in his own expeditions to crested gecko territory, Thomas Marriott noted the presence of cheese/noni fruit (Morinda citrifolia). Robbie Hamper has speculated that Geissois flowersas well as figs (Ficus sp.) are also an important part of wild crested gecko diet. These foods may be found on the forest floor or on branch tips, where a crested gecko’s grippy, highly flexible feet come in handy. 

Where does the pollen come from? Aside from the geckos potentially eating it directly from flowers, note that flying insects are often pollinators, which means that they’re usually coated with the stuff. When a crested gecko eats a flying insect, it is likely to get a dose of pollen along with it. 

What a Crested Gecko’s Wild Diet Means for Your Pet 

Crested geckos are omnivorous, having evolved to live in an environment where they eat primarily insects, fruit, and pollen, with some vertebrates and seeds on the side. Does this mean that, instead of CGD, we should go back to feeding crested geckos on a varied, whole-food diet?  

Not necessarily. After all, there’s no point in fixing what isn’t necessarily broken, and top CGD formulas are doing a good job of raising, breeding, and maintaining pet crested geckos. The key, then, is to be more discerning in our use of CGD and more intentional about how we fit that into our geckos’ total dietary strategy: 

1. Look for CGD formulas that emphasize insect protein over other protein sources in their recipe. While you’re looking at the ingredients list, check for the pollen and honey (concentrated flower nectar). The CGD should be relatively low in fat content as well.
2. Even with insect protein in the CGD, offer calcium-dusted feeder insects as well. CGD 3-4x/week and live food 1-2x/week is a good baseline schedule for both juveniles and adults. If you want to go the extra mile, dust the bugs with a bit of organic pollen powder too. (If your gecko wasn’t raised with feeder insects, it may take them a while to recognize bugs as food.) 
3. Give your gecko a variety of foods, as much as you can manage. Rotate between multiple flavors of CGD and multiple different types of feeder insect. Dietary variety is good for balanced nutrition as well as a source of sensory enrichment that increases your gecko’s quality of life!
4. Use low-fat, flying or crawling insects as feeders, with the abovementioned list as your inspiration. Think black soldier flies, wax moths, climbing roaches, mealworm beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms, and hornworms. And let them hunt their prey — don’t just give it to them in a bowl or on a pair of tongs all the time.
5. Vertebrate prey can be offered as a rare treat. Pinkie mice are too calorie-dense for the average pet crested gecko to really benefit from, but a mourning gecko or house gecko could be just right.
6. Adjust your gecko’s feeding schedule and portions according to its body condition. You don’t want your gecko to look quite so emaciated as its wild counterparts, but a svelte physique without obvious ribs or hip bones is a good goal. Excess flesh or “flabbiness” is a sign that you gecko is eating too much. Providing a larger enclosure and encouraging hunting also improves body condition
7. Provide high-quality T5 UVB lighting for a UVI of 1.0-2.0 in the gecko’s basking area so your gecko can make their own vitamin D3 on an as-needed basis. However, feeder insects should still be dusted with a D3-free calcium powder to balance the calcium-to-phosphorous (Ca:P) ratio.

Conclusion 

Paying attention to our reptiles’ natural history helps us take better care of them as pets by understanding the environment that shaped their baseline physiology: exactly what they are as animals. Pangea is among the most trusted and thoroughly-tested crested gecko diets in the world, with a variety of flavors and formulations, including Pangea Gecko Diet with Insects and Pangea Gecko Diet with Fig & Insects.

Written by Mariah Healey, ReptiFiles.com