Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Of all the Uroplatus I have seen, and I have seen many pictures of many species. The most unique feature to me, aside from a Satanics eyes/horn, are Cork barks extremely large toe pads. Every picture has these guys with very large toe pads with respect to the size of the animal.

Id like to hear some people's ideas on the subject.
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Uroplatus sikorae
Uroplatus henkeli
Ball python
Hogg Island Boa Constrictor
Several species of tarantula

well with my pair , i they use it to perform very acrobatic leaps and stuff. i have seen them hang onto a branch by just one toe after "flying" across the tank after some waxworm moths that i placed in the tak.they loved them. i belive that corkbarks are mor than likley upper canopy dwelling animals and so the large toe pads more than like evolutions way of making them not fall. what does everyone else think?

i would agree that it helps catch some air when leaping. so they don't fall as quickly. the feet look quite similar to " flying" geckos.

That's very interesting. This one toe hanging, correlates what the woman from wildeyesreptiles said of this species, she said they were very good leapers, and for their size, the strongest of all the species she has encountered. She also said that they are the hardest ones to remove from your hands once they attach on.

Curious, is the flap of skin along their joints (not the dermal flaps for camoflage) any larger in surface for their size, than the other species?

Larger toe pads may corrospond to higher canopy life. Arboreal tarantulas have larger sized "toes" compared to their ground dwelling brothers.
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Uroplatus sikorae
Uroplatus henkeli
Ball python
Hogg Island Boa Constrictor
Several species of tarantula

I keep Cork Barks and I don't think the larger toe-pad are an adaptation to life in the canopy at all. My Giant day geckos live high in the canopy and are much more acrobatic than my leaf tails and have small two pads. I do not believe in evolution but do believe in natural selection (survival of the fittest) and can except that maybe cork barks have large toe pads because that just how they are.

how can you believe in natural selection, and not evolution?
to me it's the same thing. i understand to some people evolution is more of a religious term, but it's the same thing. if say a corkbark leaftail has a genetic mutation which gave it larger toe pads, and it wasn't killed as others were, then it would survive due to natural selection. then it may pass it's genes on and the entire species may evolve. ( therefore EVOLUTION would be taking place)

Many years ago I did believe in evolution but since then have done some research and rejected it as a bogus theory. The main problem that I see with evolution is that a thing if given enough time will evolve into something totally different. So if you take a flea and give it 20 billion years eventually it will evolve into a human. Natural selection is much simpler and makes a lot more since stating animals make small changes to adapt to their enviroment within their species. This is what Darwin believed in. Also evolution is a theory and has not been proven Natural Selection has.
-Matt

i understand the differences you came up with. i was viewing both as the same thing. thanks

im pretty sure microscale evolution has been proven (more on the lines of what you talk about in concern of natural selection - evolving to adapt to selection pressures - while macroscale evolution has not yet been proven (like you said, going from primitive amphibian tetrapods to humans)

I don't believe evolution says that a "lower" organism will HAVE to evolve into a "higher" organism?

So Matt, you don't believe that all organsims are descended from a common ancestor?

So, I am curious...what do you believe?
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Uroplatus sikorae 1.1
Uroplatus henkeli
Ball python
Hogg Island Boa Constrictor
Several species of tarantula