As an adult it can dig burrows, locate carcasses that are more than 3 km away, swim from island to island, and kill mammals as big as deer, wild pigs, and even water buffaloes and humans. 2006), though as yet we have no idea how common it is in the wild. Parthenogenesis sometimes occurs (Watts et al. As a juvenile it’s an excellent climber and in fact is predominantly arboreal - indeed, juveniles live such different lives from adults they effectively function as separate 'species' (Imansyah et al. It’s said that the Komodo’s legs and tail become proportionally shorter and stockier as it gets larger (in other words, these parts of the body exhibit negative allometry). There are, of course, stories about people seeing (and even killing) Komodo dragons 4 m, 5 m and even 7 m long. The big caveat here, of course, is that captive animals tend to be much fatter than wild ones. Mark Carwardine’s Guinness Book of Animal Records gives the St Louis Zoological Gardens specimen (presented in 1928 by the Sultan of Bima) as the record-holder for the species, and in 1937 this was apparently 3.1 m long and 166 kg (Carwardine 1995). Some seemingly reputable sources provide maximum lengths of 3.5 m and weights of 250 kg or so (Steel 1996) whereas others have 70 kg (or slightly more) as the greatest weight attained in the wild (Ciofi 2004). As usual with big animals, there are diverse views on exactly how big it can be. Ouwens), the dragon is the largest living lizard, big adult males exceeding 3 m in total length and 70 kg in weight. van Steyn van Hensbroek, and described in the same year by Peter A. Unknown to western science until 1912 (when it was ‘discovered’ by J. Without doubt, one of the coolest living animals on the planet is the Komodo dragon Varanus komodoensis, a giant flesh-eating lizard that kills water buffalo, eats children, has venom glands, and is impervious to bullets (ok, I made that last bit up). What with all the monitor-themed goodness around these parts lately (see links below), it seems only fitting that I provide a re-vamped, substantially updated version of this Tet Zoo ver 2 classic (originally published in September 2007).
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