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• WHAT IS THE BIGGEST COMODO DRAGON FULL

Full grown dragons are considered too heavy to climb but (as you can see here) during the excitement of a hunt they are capable of chasing monkeys into the trees © Mark EveleighĪs effective as this “grip, rip and drip” technique is, the jury is still out on exactly how dragons kill large prey such as the water buffalo and wild horses they hunt on Rinca island. Until they are about two yers old, dragons spend most of their time in trees. Rather than clamping with powerful jaws, a dragon shreds with serrated teeth and pulls with powerful neck muscles to open gaping wounds to the effects of venom. “The role of the venom is to exaggerate blood loss and the shock-inducing mechanical damage caused by the bite,” he says. On an island dominated by 85kg-lizards that can smell blood more than 4km away, any of these symptoms might lead to death.įry believes that it is a combined “grip, rip and drip” technique that eventually spells the demise of even large prey. They provoke painful cramping, anti-coagulation, dramatic drop in body heat, haemorrhage, heightened sensitivity to pain, shock and unconsciousness.

Dr Fry, a world authority on venom, isolated five individual toxins in dragon venom in 2009. It’s a mark of the Komodo archipelago’s remoteness – and the logistical complexities of research in Indonesia – that it was several decades before biologists established that Varanus komodoensis has venom ducts in its jaws. Yet it was instantly accepted simply because it was enchanting … just like most fairy tales.” “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” says Bryan Fry, a scientist at the University of Queensland, “and bacteria-as-a-weapon would have been an unprecedented form of predation strategy. “Since then there have been more than a dozen attacks, and it seems that the dragons are becoming more aggressive.”īuffalo are a prey item of komodo dragons © Mark Eveleigh “In 2007, a 10-year-old boy was disembowelled by a dragon hiding near where he was playing football,” Pak Man tells me. The village elder, who introduces himself as Pak Man, describes how ora frequently enter the settlement through its old cemetery, tempted by the goats grazing among the tombs. Ora is the local name for the Komodo dragon, Varanus komodoensis, and seems almost to have been designed to be barked as an alarm call. “A big ora killed a goat here yesterday,” an old man tells me as we walk along the rickety timber jetty into Komodo village. On Komodo, however, people don’t venture into the hills unless strictly necessary. Locals on neighbouring Flores island tap these palms to make a sort of arak with the unlikely name of sophie. They are stubbled with prehistoric-looking lontar palms. Then the sun-burned, savannah hills of Komodo island rise on the horizon, appearing more African than lush Indonesian.