Komodo Dragon

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The Komodo Dragon by Mark Carwardine

Once reputed to be the origin of the Chinese dragon myth, scaly Komodo dragons have loose, leathery skin and, though they don't actually breathe fire, are reputed to have the worst breath of any creature on the planet. They live on a handful of volcanic islands (Komodo, Rinca, Flores, Gili Motang and Gili Dasami) in the middle of the Indonesian archipelago.

The Komodo dragon is massive. Measuring up to three metres long and weighing as much as 170 kilograms, it is so large and powerful that it could knock a buffalo off its feet with a single swipe of the tail. The fact that it is merely a lizard (a monitor lizard, to be precise) makes it all the more unreal.

It is well known as a man-eater and tourists of several nationalities, as well as locals, have been eaten over the years. Sadly, one of the most recent deaths was an eight-year-old boy living on Komodo, who was attacked on 4 June 2007 and later died from his wounds.

But Komodo dragons don't get to eat people very often. Their diet normally consists of goats, pigs and deer and such like, though they will only kill these animals if they can't find something that's dead already. They are, at heart, scavengers. They like their meat bad and smelly.

In the past, they've even raided graves outside the village of Komodo to feed on human corpses. The surviving villagers have since wised up to their antics and now pile heavy rocks on top of their deceased to protect them.

Armed with more than 60 2.5-centimetre-long serrated teeth, the Komodo dragon tears huge chunks of flesh from its larger prey and swallows smaller animals whole. It takes about 20 minutes to gulp down a complete goat (the hair, horns and teeth are regurgitated later). To prevent itself from suffocating during such a remarkable feat, it has a small tube under its tongue that connects to the lungs.

Photo by Mark Carwardine

It's bad enough being eaten by a Komodo dragon, but even if you just get bitten you are in very serious trouble, too. And that's because it has a nasty little trick. If a dragon attacks a horse or a buffalo, for example, it doesn't necessarily expect to kill it there and then (despite being incredibly well armed). If it gets involved in a fight it might get injured, and there's no benefit in that, so sometimes the dragon will just bite its prey and walk away. What happens is that its saliva does all the dirty work: it is swimming with bacteria that are so virulent the wounds never heal. So the hapless animal will usually die in a few days of septicaemia, whereupon the dragon can eat it at leisure.

But there's more. Perhaps the strangest thing about the Komodo dragon is that it's capable of virgin birth. Recent research suggests that the females can lay viable eggs without bothering to get them fertilised by males.

There are roughly 5,000 Komodo dragons in the wild, but there is fear for their future because only about 350 of them are believed to be breeding females. Added to this, their limited habitat is shrinking and there is a constant threat from poaching and wildfires. Even dangerous animals can be endangered.