Researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum of Natural History and Pennsylvania’s Villanova University have discovered a new family of gecko, the charismatic large-eyed lizard popularized by car insurance commercials.

A new anti-sliding adhesive developed by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, may be the closest man-made material yet to mimic the remarkable gecko toe hairs that allow the tiny lizard to scamper along vertical surfaces and ceilings.

Velcro, Superglue and Post-It Notes… Three things that started out as obscure inventions but are now indispensable for everyday life. So what will the next idea to stick with modern society look like" The answer may lie in the tiny toes of a humble lizard, according to a University of Calgary biologist who is trying to figure out how geckos can cling to virtually any surface, including glass.

Mimicking the agile gecko, with its uncanny ability to run up walls and across ceilings, has long been a goal of materials scientists. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Akron have taken one sticky step in the right direction, creating synthetic "gecko tape" with four times the sticking power of the real thing.

Neighbors gone, sex gone, fruits gone, species gone. This is the ultra-short conclusion of the findings in a study by Dennis Hansen, Heine Kiesbüy, and Christine Müller from Zurich University, and Carl Jones from the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, who found that an endangered plant in Mauritius depends on a neighboring plant to provide a safe home for its pollinator, a day-active gecko.