Not every family of lizards gets to be immortalized in the annals of commerce, but the family gekkonidae, what you and I know as geckos, is just lucky like that. Eighteen species of the lucky lizards are on display in Geckos: Tails to Toepads at the National Geographic Museum. As the exhibit title suggests, there’s something interesting to be found in every inch of these technicolor creatures. But they are certainly more than the sum of their parts, and not just because they eat nasty bugs that would otherwise devour us all alive.

The exhibit bears only a passing reference to insurance, and primarily focuses on the fascinating biology of these creatures. Still, it’s not hard to mentally anthropomorphize their little kaleidoscopic hides, especially when, just like humans, they fall into varying places on the social spectrum and look so cute when they’re sleeping on rocks. I asked a staff member if there were any casualties among the more social species, and in fact the popular Tokay Geckos did see a recent injury — if you looked closely at one Tokay’s thigh a few weeks ago, you’d see yellowing from where iodine was applied after a fellow cubicle mate took a chunk out of its thigh.