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August 2001
Komodo and its Dragons
Odv2004-09-15 12:29:19
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/>Being bitten in the leg or arm will probably result in amputation, if you are lucky...
Not only the mouth is deadly, take a closer look at a dragon's front claw, and you can imagine how they tear up their prey.
Below is a picture of a komodo dragon walking towards me, you don't want to hang around too long at such a time. I took a picture and quickly got out of its way. It had just been chased out of a building and wasn't happy at all.
From the camp we made several guided trips to Banu Nggulung, a dry riverbed where goats were fed to the dragons in the past, in order to entertain visitors. According to the guides this practice made the dragons lazy, since they no longer had to hunt and so it was discontinued.
Douglas Adams wrote a gruesome description of a goat being fed to the dragons, read it and you have a good impression of what is was like in those days.
Today there are still many dragons in and around the riverbed, but they are difficult to spot. You often mistake a tree trunk for a dragon (I guess that's better than the other way round). Some dragons run away as fast as they can on the mere sight, or is it smell, of tourists!
This old female dragon (below), seemed very hungry. According to the guide she was about 35 years old. Dragons can become 50. Apparently she didn't appreciate our presence and started hissing at us. But the guide was not outdone, and we even got to touch her tail.
You're actually less likely to see a female since males outnumber females by 3.4 to 1. Nobody knows why and this remains one of the big mysteries about the dragons.
This young ora (picture on the left) tries to climb a stone wall. Anywhere else you'd consider this to be a big lizard, but on Komodo these ones are small! If you take a closer look you can clearly see the ears, which are actually just holes.
Since komodo dragons
...
See photographs from:
Indonesia Gallery
