WHAT KIND OF LIZARD IS BIDO?
(AN EXERCISE IN AMATEUR HERPETOLOGY)
The answer lies in his abilities! Bido's hands and feet allow him to scale any flat surface with ease, and this isn't merely a Lizard Thing™ but a unique feature of some (not all) members of the geckos. Their sticky pads aren't literally sticky, by the way! They interact with molecular forces to adhere to surfaces. Realistically, Bido's pads would need to be much larger to allow him to climb the way a real gecko can because of his greater surface area and weight, but it's okay because he can do whatever he wants if he sets his mind to it.
So! We know he's a gecko. But maybe we can go deeper. After all, there are plenty of geckos out there, all with their own unique grab bag of traits. Is it possible to narrow Bido down to a family, or even a species?
THE LIZARD LOWDOWN
Of the infraorder Gekkota, representing all living members of the clade Gekkonomorpha, there are seven unique families, split into two superfamilies:
- Carphodactylidae
- Diplodactylidae
- Pygopodidae
- Eublepharidae
- Gekkonidae
- Phyllodactylidae
- Sphaerodactylidae
From the start, we can rule out the Carphodactylids. Despite how cute and weird they are, they're also known as the "southern padless geckos"; Bido's definitely not padless! We can also rule out the Pygopodids, because... well.
The Eublepharids, including such popular pets as leopard geckos, are known as the "eyelid geckos" for their uniquely movable eyelids, and Bido definitely has those-- but they, too, lack toepads. So chalk up his continued ability to blink to luck of the transmutation roulette, I guess. And "sphaerodactyl" means "round toes", as those are another padless family, so the Sphaerodactylids are out as well.
The final three possible families are Diplodactylidae, Gekkonidae, and Phyllodactylidae... which themselves include 99 different genera, combined.
Hm.
We can rule out any of the Diphlodactylids with an extra sticky pad on the end of their tails, as well as the ones who don't grow their tails back after dropping them, because according to the mobile game that's an ability Bido has and things from the mobile game can be canon if they make my life slightly easier. There are some additional padless geckos within the remaining three families; those can be eliminated too. We can also rule out anything with a weird-shaped tail, or markedly different colors and patterns, and after getting rid of all of those we still havvvvvvvvve... way too many geckos!
Okay!!! Okay. Surely there's something we're missing. Something to give us more guidance. Aha-- like that picture that pops up when Greed's introducing Bido as a lizard chimera! Maybe that's exactly the kind of blueprint we're looking for!!!
...Except. What kind of gecko looks like that? It's bright green with yellow stripes, like maybe a member of the Naultinus family? But its tail is all mottled, so maybe one of the dwarf geckos, Lygodactylus-- some of those have yellow stripes down their backs too, and they can look kind of green. But it has five toes on each of its forelimbs and three on its hind limbs...? And, hang on, its fingers are too slender to have any pads! Even though we know for a fact that Bido has them!! Augh!!!!
Look, people, it's three in the morning. I've just spent a whole evening and night looking at hundreds of pictures of lizards on the internet. There's no right answer here-- Arakawa was NOT thinking as hard about this as I am, and neither were the artists for Brotherhood who drew 2 frames of a gecko to illustrate an exposition dump. Bido may as well be some fantasy gecko that doesn't exist in the real world. Trying to get a few spare crumbs of lore like this is trying to squeeze water out of a stone.
...But if you happen to be an expert at gecko ID and you think there's a clear solution to my plight that I'm just not seeing then there's one easy way to earn my undying gratitude.