Many species of animals are house associates of humans living in rural or semi-rural areas. They live in people’s houses. Those that neither harm nor benefit people are scientifically considered “commensals.” These species often share food with people and are generally tolerated because they are perceived to cause no harm to humans. Examples of these organisms are the four common species of house gekkos and a common species of frog.
There are, however, species that are not welcome to human dwellings. These include snakes, rats, mice and cockroaches, all of which are considered unwelcome because they are perceived to be harmful in a number of ways. Cockroaches, rats and mice carry bacteria that cause diseases and contaminate human food. There are probably good reasons for eliminating them from human dwellings.
But the three or four species of common snakes occasionally found in human dwellings are all harmless species and can do no harm to human beings. They are feared because they are snakes. People do not relish the idea of snakes in the house. One of them, the common python or sawa, is in fact useful— because it feeds on rats (considered undesirable) in human dwellings. Pythons of course also feed on chickens but in general are considered useful in human ecology. And it is becoming rare in nature.
So if you have problem with pythons in your attic and the other common species in your yard, please call us at SUAKCREM (Telephone 522-0517). We will catch them and release them in forested areas where they can live without much trouble from human beings.
Let me go back to the gekkos. All of them are useful to human beings. They generally feed on small insects that alight on the walls and the ceilings, although the smaller species are often observed to take small pieces of meat or fish on the table. The largest of the house gekkos (Gekko gecko) is the tukay or tuko. This species, which can grow to 150-200 grams in weight, is a voracious predator on cockroaches. The house with this species has practically no cockroaches. The only minor problem with this gecko is that it defecates on a certain section of the house which should be cleaned from time to time.
I took a special interest on this species some time ago because somebody reported that it also feeds on baby rats and true enough this feeding habit has recently been confirmed by my associate, Abner Bucol. In addition, he has observed and photographed an adult tuko that was trying to swallow a young rat that it caught and killed. Bucol has written the first paper for publication on this feeding habit of Gekko gecko. There is no doubt that this species is an active predator of rats.
So our advice is to allow this gecko to take up residence in a section of the house where it is free to assist in keeping down the population of rats and mice.
