Sometimes it takes a unique breeding ground to foster a truly incredible chain of events. The Black Pearl was discovered at a zoological garden in Holland, half a world away from us here at The Urban Gecko. The keepers at the zoological garden had imported a modest grounp of wild-caught Leopard Geckos. Once the geckos were housed together, breeding ensued and the group began laying eggs. The keepers at the zoological garden decided to incubate the eggs and had no idea what they were about to hatch. After a couple of months, babies started to emerge from the eggs and they noticed something very unusual about two of the babies - they did not look like any of the others. In fact, they did not look like any other Leopard Gecko they’d ever seen before.
These babies were solid black from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail and patternless. They contacted a Dutch reptile breeder for his opinion and not only did he tell them that he had never seen anything like them before but he promptly made them an offer for the two black babies. He knew right then and there how unique and rare these geckos were.
The two babies matured into a male and female but unfortunately the female passed away before her first breeding season. In his first breeding season the male was bred to a few unrelated wild-caught females. The Dutch reptile breeder managed to hatch a few eggs from this breeding but unfortunately, none of them emerged as black patternless babies. He later decided he wanted to focus his reptile collection exclusively on snakes. So he contacted his very good friend, Conrad Wlodarczyk, a leading European Leopard Gecko breeder in Poland. The two spoke about the project and just the thought of having a black Leopard Gecko in his collection was enough for Konrad to make an incredibly generous offer that his friend could not refuse.
