In a world first, a research team including James Cook University scientists has discovered how geckos manage to stay clean, even in dusty deserts. The process, described in Interface, the prestigious journal of the Royal Society, may also turn out to have important human applications. JCU's Professor Lin Schwarzkopf said the group found that tiny droplets of water on geckos, for instance from condensing dew, come into contact with hundreds of thousands of extremely small hair-like spines that cover the animals' bodies.