Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 2, 1991                   TAG: 9104020008
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Madelyn Rosenberg
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SETTLING FOR THE SILENCE OF THE LIZARDS

And they've never come up in conversation - not even once.

Teachers often reassured me that the courses I liked the least were meant to teach me to think, not show me how to do things I would use in everyday life.

So I really have to admire a group of students in Norfolk who, after watching (via satellite) a Virginia Tech program on lizard sounds, made one heck of an effort to put the information to some practical use.

They even tried to put it to music.

The students, who attend the Governor's School for the Arts, had been working with synthesizer recordings at the time they saw the lizard program, presented by Thomas Jenssen of Tech's biology department.

When it was over, they attempted to incorporate lizard sounds into some original music they were creating for Earth Day.

It hasn't been easy.

"Trouble is," said Louise Lowenthal, director of the school, "it's hard to record lizard sounds."

The reason, says Jenssen, is that most lizards are pretty quiet.

They'll make squeaking sounds when they're caught or fighting, but mainly they use visual signals to communicate.

The exception here is the gecko lizard. These small reptiles, named for the loud call they make, are the resident big mouths among lizards. They come out at night when visual signals would just not be practical.

"The geckos squeak and bark and do all kinds of stuff," said Jenssen, an associate professor at Tech. More impressively, they can hang on ceilings.

Sadly, these well-meaning students in Norfolk probably won't find geckos there. They live in the tropics, or subtropics.

If the students were to take a field trip to, say, Tech's Derring Hall, they would stand a better chance at completing their tune.

About eight years ago, a couple of Jenssen's geckos, imported for a science project, escaped. And, out there in the wild of the classrooms and offices, they started their own little population.

"They're still living in the building," Jenssen said. "If you walk into one of the rooms and turn on the light, sometimes you can catch them by a water pipe."

No cause for alarm here. Only two species of lizards are poisonous, and the gecko isn't one of them.

But school budgets being the way they are these days, it is unlikely the students will get their field trip. Perhaps they could settle for the squeaky noises from those other lizards. "They'd have to get the microphone pretty close," Jenssen said. "They'd be a lot better off, for this kind of thing, using frogs."