Komodo varan

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Komodo Dragon

My project is about the fascinating Komodo dragon. I’ve chosen this animal because an old friend of mine did a small topic about this animal, that’s when my interest for this super animal began. Later on I have been watching television programs about the Komodo dragon.

This super adapted animal lives on the islands of Flores, Rinca, Gili Motang and Komodo in Indonesia. You can also find them on some small islands nearby; they can reach these islands by their very skill full swimming. In the 1970s they also lived on the island of Padar, but they drifted away to the other islands because humans who killed all their food. The climate on these islands varies a lot. In the lowlands the climate is damp and tropical. In the highlands the landscape is dry and very few trees grow on this location, the ground is covered with sand. The lizards like to be in the dry landscape in the mornings where they are sunbathing to keep their body temperature, they’re cold blooded and can’t keep their body temperature steady by them self. They dig holes in the ground to get shade from the blazing sun.
Later in the day they move down to the tropic landscape to cool them self off in the shade of the trees.

The Komodo dragons live on the edges of the islands close to the water (the red area shows where the lizards live). They got their name from a Dutch colonial administrator named Lieutenant van Steyn van Hensbroek, who was first to document them. Stories from Dutch sailors about dragons has been past down ever since they explored the area in the1600. The dragons that we know about may come from these sailors; one story is that the sailors saw these 3-meter long lizards on the beach sunbathing and then when they stuck out their yellow tongue, they may have thought that the tongue was the fire that dragon’s breath.



The Komodo dragon has an interesting hunting tactic; it’s not a fast animal (it can run 11.184 miles per hour) so it can’t chase its prays down, instead it hides in high grass or in a bush, where it lays still and waits until it’s pray will come. When a deer comes and lumps over the lizard it jumps up and bites the deer in the stomach or such, if the deer doesn’t die instantly it will die within a week . The komodo has bad hygiene in it’s mouth it could be because it never brush its teeth or such but it’s got over 50 different nasty bacteria. It’s not the actual bite that kills, it’s the bacteria that is transferred into the wound. For the Komodo this is a good thing because it got all the different bacteria in it’s mouth it is resistant to the bacteria. When its pray is bitten the Komodo follows it around the island until it dies. At this time it has to be quick, another Komodo dragon can smell the dead pray in a distance of 6.5 miles. The teeth in a Komodo mouth doesn’t look like other lizards teeth, the varan family (the family that the Komodo belongs to) has got teeth that are familiar to the shark teeth. This makes the varan capable to eat a lot of flesh in a short period of time. Scientists have observed a 94-pound Komodo eat a 66-pound wild boar in just 17 minuets! After a big meal a varan doesn’t have to eat in several days. The biggest Komodo ever recorded weight 250 kilos after a big meal! The komodo favorite food is Sunda deer (also known as Rusa deer), they also eat wild boar, water buffalo, rats and a lot of different animals but also young komodo. They mostly eat carrion already dead meat.
The females doesn’t look much different from the males but the different in size is huge, a female can get up to 2,3 meters long and weight up to 68 kilos, a male can get up to 3.05 meters and weight 250 kilos after a large meal. In freedom the life expectancy for a Komodo is about 50 years.
The adults are brown-, yellowish and the small babies have yellow spots and brown horizontal lines. The mother takes care of the eggs, which are in a hole in the ground where they are protected from the heat. When the eggs are hatched the babies’ climb up the trees as fast as they can to escape all the dangerous grownups, they eat the smaller ones. The small komodo live in the trees until they are 4 years old or 4 feet long. At that time they are usually big enough to run away from a big komodo and hide in the smaller trees in the forest. Up in the trees they eat small insects like beetles and mostly geckos.
This super animal doesn’t have any natural enemies except for humans. In the different landscape in the world it’s mostly the mammals that are the top predators, not on these islands, here it’s the Komodo that is the top predator. All the great mammals would die; this is because there is much less food here then in the savanna. A scientist named Auffenberg has observed different animals and his conclusion is that, a tiger needs about 12 pounds of food every day, a wolf needs 7 pounds and a Komodo needs 1 pound. So the other animals would simply starve to death.





Tales about that the Komodo would be eating humans are not completely false. Attacks have taken place on the Komodo Island, but almost all of them are on tourists who weren’t so careful. There’s a story about a man who was lying on a beach and sunbathing, then later in the day they only found his hat and his sunglasses. This I don’t know if it is true. The Komodo doesn’t kill the people who live on the island. When a Komodo comes in to the village everyone stands still and some also takes a stick that they can poke a Komodo if it would get too aggressive. On the island there are locations that the guides know that the Komodo likes to lye on. On these locations they have built a fence so that the tourists can watch the Komodo with out risking there lives. It’s like a reverse zoo...