Photo: Rachel Nuwer. Standing in front of an assembly line of water buffalo, deer and wild horse skulls — dragon chow — Mr. Safina laughed while gesturing to a row of little wooden crosses stuck in the nearby mud. Safina joked.
Now, are you ready to go see the dragons? In recent years, visitors have increasingly flooded this corner of Indonesia, drawn in by the thrill of brushing close to something wild and dangerous.
Dragons are not to be taken lightly: male lizards can grow up to 10 feet long, weigh pounds and eat up to 80 percent of their own body weight in one sitting. Though attacks are exceptionally rare, they do occasionally occur, mostly when a park guard lets his focus slip for a moment, or a villager has a particularly unlucky day. Here are some of the most infamous attacks, as described by Mr.
Safina and corroborated by media reports:. In , a dragon killed an 8-year-old boy on Komodo Island, marking the first fatal attack on a human in 33 years, the Guardian reported. While the Guardian writes that the boy died from massive bleeding from his torso, Mr. Safina recalls the boy being bitten in half. In light of the tragedy, park wardens launched an island-wide hunt for the man-eating lizard, though whether or not these efforts produced results remains unclear.
After spending 10 hours spinning in the tide, around midnight the group washed up on the beach of what seemed like a deserted island, approximately 25 miles from where their ordeal had begun.
Their troubles, however, were far from over. They had found their way to Rinca Island, where an estimate 1, dragons live. The attacks began almost immediately, the Telegraph reports. Explore More. Komodo dragons are the biggest and heaviest lizards on Earth.
Common Name: Komodo dragons. Scientific Name: Varanus komodoensis. Type: Reptiles. Diet: Carnivore. Size: 10 feet. Weight: pounds. Explore more! Amazing animals videos Watch to discover interesting facts about animals from all over the world. Save the Earth tips Save the Earth tips. Sometimes these burrows can be seen along the slopes of dry streambeds among tree roots. However, not all Komodo dragons use burrows; in fact, one adult male on Komodo Island often sleeps at night in an abandoned hut that visitors used to stay in!
An adult dragon leads a life of leisure. It emerges from its burrow to look for a sunny spot to warm up in. After a late afternoon meal, the dragon is ready for bed, sleeping soundly in its burrow until a new day begins.
It is a solitary creature that lives and hunts alone. An adult Komodo dragon eats whatever food is available. Its natural prey, however, is the Timor deer. The deer are wary and quite agile, requiring the dragon to resort to lying in ambush in the long grass next to game trails, in order to be successful in hunting. When the deer passes by, the dragon uses its long claws and sharp teeth to attack. If the prey escapes, the dragon can rely on its long tongue to find its whereabouts, even up to a mile away 1.
Komodo dragons also eat water buffalo and wild pigs, both of which were introduced by man, as well as snakes and fish that wash up on the shore. On Rinca and Komodo islands, pigs have become common in some areas and are now competitors for food with the big lizards. Some dragons have visible scars from conflicts with wild boars. Komodo dragons may also be cannibalistic. Fortunately, the young spend their lives in trees, which likely helps reduce their risk of predation from the adults.
In addition, Komodo dragon saliva contains potentially harmful bacteria that are thought to help weaken prey that are too large for a single dragon to overpower.
Some recent research suggests that Komodo dragons might also be venomous due to some of the properties of components in their saliva. Whether they are venomous or not is subject to interpretation at this time; it is too early to make this conclusion until more research is done.
On the smaller islands of Gili Motang and Gili Dasami, within Komodo National Park, the Komodo dragons were discovered to be notably smaller than those found on the nearby islands of Rinca and Flores. Genetically these dragons were found to be related to those on neighboring islands, so what could account for the discrepancy is size? Gili Motang, for example, is not as high in elevation as Rinca and Komodo, lacks a cloud forest at its peak, and has a much drier climate than does neighboring Rinca and Flores.
In fact, fresh water has not been observed on Gili Motang. Furthermore, the density and number of Timor deer was found to be much lower as well on both of these islands. It is believed that the dragons on these islands are merely adapting to a reduced food supply by decreasing body size in response to a decreased availability of food.
The Komodo dragons on these islands are quite wary, and it is thought that cannibalism is a greater threat to young dragons here than on the larger islands. Like many reptiles, the number of Komodo dragon females that nest every year often changes , due to the availability of prey and the physical condition of the female.
Female dragons do not breed every year. Female dragons use three different nest types for their eggs: hillside nests, ground nests, and mound nests built by the orange-footed scrub fowl.
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