How nice it must be to skate on a pond when it’s not even frozen. Lots of insects can do it, like these water striders. Since they’re so small, surface tension holds them up. Bigger creatures, like these grebes, rely on muscle power. They slap the water with their feet and follow through with a paddle-like push. The famous basilisk lizards do the same thing. And now, we can add the Asian house gecko to this elite group. Field researchers in Singapore discovered that geckos, too, can run across water when they’re scared, as you can see in this rare footage. Amazingly, they go just as fast on the water as they do on land. Researchers tested the mechanics of this motion in a lab at the University of California, Berkeley. What they found is that geckos slapped the water with all four feet, trapping pockets of air. That helps with the follow-through stroke as they push forward. Their tail also undulates like a snake or an alligator swimming. You only see that from above. These two engines — feet and tail — raise the gecko’s body high enough above the surface so that it hydroplanes. The gecko’s movement also depends on surface tension. Look what happened when the researchers added soap to the water to reduce that tension. The geckos floundered, struggling to stay above the surface. They could still move along, but only at about half-speed. It was too much for some of them. They just went on strike and stopped altogether — proving that geckos are not only fast, but smart.