Leopard gecko integumentary system — skin, shedding, and toes without pads
Overview of leopard gecko skin — granular scales and movable eyelids, clawed toes lacking the adhesive lamellae of pad-bearing geckos, periodic shedding, and fat stored in the tail.
General educational reference only — not clinical or veterinary advice. Anatomy varies between individual animals; consult a licensed veterinarian for any health concern.
Granular skin and movable eyelids
The leopard gecko's skin is soft and covered in fine granular scales with scattered larger, raised tubercles across the back. Reptile skin holds very few glands; the visible ones here are a row of preanal pores in front of the vent, well developed in males, which secrete a waxy material. Leopard geckos belong to the eyelid geckos and, unlike most gecko families, have functional movable eyelids rather than a fixed transparent spectacle over the eye.
Toes without adhesive lamellae
Pad-bearing geckos climb smooth vertical surfaces using subdigital lamellae — expanded scales on the underside of each toe carrying dense fields of microscopic hair-like setae that branch into spatulae and adhere by intermolecular forces. The leopard gecko has no such apparatus. Its toes are slender and end in claws, matching a ground-dwelling animal that walks and digs rather than one that clings to vertical surfaces.
Shedding and the tail
The epidermis is renewed periodically: a new layer forms beneath the old one, the outer skin turns dull and whitish as the two separate, and it is then loosened at the snout and worked off in large pieces, which the gecko commonly eats. The thick tail is a storage organ, holding fat beneath the skin as an energy reserve; a tail regrown after autotomy carries a different scale pattern and coloring from the original.
