Eric - He's still in early training, so he doesn't realize that food only comes in the bowl (it tends to fall between the gravel otherwise). But he does scrounge for the pellets when he happens upon the bowl, so I think he'll get the point soon. The bowl is a soy sauce bowl from a local Japanese store.
As for breeding - they did a genetic crossing study with lab axolotls, Mexico City axolotls, and Tiger salamanders to determine the genes for neoteny. They found that the metamorphosis genes that were linked in the lab axolotls were not connected at all in the wildtype. This means that the nearly 100% neoteny seen in lab axolotls is itself an artificial feature! A lot more wild axolotls spontaneously transform.
So the pets we have are well on their way towards being a true distinct pet species, so who knows what is possible? Most of the color variations in the Leopard Gecko appeared only in the last few years - so it wouldn't take that long to find new patterns if someone really tried.