No Gecko Wants a Terrarium
Walk into a pet shop and for maybe £35, you can walk out with a gecko. No questions asked. No qualifications needed. No understanding of who they are or what they need. Just a confused, frightened, solitary individual shoved in a box, sold like a cheap toy.
But geckos are not toys. They are not teaching tools. They are not decorations. They are complex, long-lived, emotionally and environmentally sensitive animals—and captivity fails them at every turn.
Geckos Are Not “Starter Pets”
Leopard geckos are one of the most widely sold reptiles in the pet trade. They're marketed as “easy to care for,” which is code for “easy to exploit.” In reality, their needs are nuanced, their lives are long, and captivity is a poor imitation of freedom.
A leopard gecko can live over 20 years. That’s 20 years in a box—because no matter how nice the terrarium looks to you, it’s still a prison to them.
Recent peer-reviewed research has added yet another nail in the coffin for the pet reptile trade. Scientists housed six leopard geckos in three different conditions: a barren “standard” setup, a fake plant-filled enclosure, and a naturalistic environment featuring live invertebrates and real plants. They rotated the geckos through all three settings, studying how they behaved, responded to new stimuli, and—crucially—what they chose when given the freedom to decide.
What the Geckos Told Us—Without Saying a Word
When housed in enriched environments, the geckos used every feature provided to them. They climbed, explored, soaked in their water bowls, and split their time across various hides. In the standard setups—devoid of complexity—they scratched at the barriers, huddled in the same rock hide, and lay on the floor. They behaved as someone trying to pass time in solitary confinement.
When given the choice between all three environments, they showed a strong preference for the naturalistic one. Not the minimal setup. Not the fake plastic one. The one closest to nature.
That’s not an opinion. That’s behavioural data. That's them screaming through action what we refuse to hear: they want out.
Captivity Is a Life Sentence
What’s marketed as reptile “ownership” is, in truth, a decades-long sentence of confinement. Geckos in the pet trade are denied everything that makes life worth living. They’re sold to people who often don’t even know they’re nocturnal. They're deprived of temperature gradients, climbing surfaces, and meaningful interaction. They lose their tails from stress. They suffer burns from faulty equipment. They die from metabolic bone disease when fed improperly. Most never make it past the first year.
And before any of that? Many are bred in warehouse conditions—factory-farmed in filth and isolation—or snatched from their wild homes to become someone’s passing obsession.
The reptile trade is not a quirky hobby. It’s industrialised cruelty.
Enrichment Doesn’t Just Help—It’s Basic
The new study recommends basic standards of care that should be obvious:
🦎 Enclosure height of at least 46 cm
🦎 Variety of hides and climbing structures
🦎 A water bowl large enough for full-body immersion
🦎 Live plants and invertebrates where possible
These aren’t luxuries. They’re bare minimums. If you can’t provide even this, you shouldn’t be caring for a gecko. And even if you can, you should ask yourself why you're doing it. Because no gecko has ever chosen a terrarium over freedom. The only circumstances in which bringing a gecko into your home could be considered ethical is when an existing victim of the pet trade requires adopting to keep them alive.
Every Gecko Deserves Their Wild Life
We don’t need better terrariums. We need to stop putting geckos in them.
The leopard gecko’s appeal—quiet, pretty, “low maintenance”—is the same lie told about all commodified animals. It reduces them from someone to something. From a curious explorer to a passive ornament.
Geckos are not here for us. They are not teaching tools for children or conversation starters on Instagram. They are individuals. They deserve more than a cage. They deserve their lives.
Stop buying geckos. Stop breeding geckos. And stop pretending captivity is kindness.
If you really care about geckos, you'll oppose their captivity.