KOMODO DRAGON
The Komodo dragon(Varanus komodoensis), also known as the Komodo monitor, is a large species of lizard found
in the Indonesian islands
of Komodo, Rinca, Flores, Gili
Motang, and Padar. A member of the monitor
lizard family
(Varanidae),
it is the largest living species of lizard.
Komodo dragon is
the world’s heaviest lizard, weighing 150 pounds or more. The largest
Komodo ever measured was more than 10 feet (3 meters) long and weighed 366
pounds (166 kg) but the average size of komodo in the wild is about 8 feet (2.5
meters) long and 200 pounds (91 kg).
Komodo has gray scaly skin, a pointed snout, powerful limbs and a
muscular tail. They use their keen sense of smell to locate decaying animal
remains from several miles away. They also hunt other lizards as well as large
mammals and are sometimes cannibalistic.
The Komodo dragon’s teeth are almost completely covered by its gums.
When it feeds, the gums bleed, creating an ideal culture for virulent bacteria.
The bacteria that live in the Komodo dragon’s saliva causes septicemia, or
blood poisoning, in its victims. A dragon will bite its prey,
then follow it until the animal is too weak to
carry on this lizard species is threatened by hunting, loss of prey species and
habitat loss.
Komodo dragons are carnivores.
Although they eat mostly carrion, they will also ambush live prey
with a stealthy approach. When suitable prey arrives near a dragon's ambush
site, it will suddenly charge at the animal and go for the underside or the
throat. It is able to locate its
prey using its keen sense of smell, which can locate a dead or dying animal
from a range of up to 9.5 km (5.9 mi). Komodo dragons have been
observed knocking down large pigs and deer with their strong tails.
The Komodo dragon's diet is
wide-ranging, and includes invertebrates,
other reptiles (including smaller Komodo dragons), birds,
bird eggs, small mammals, monkeys, wild boar, goats, deer, horses, and water
buffalo. Young Komodos will eat insects, eggs, geckos,
and small mammals. Occasionally, they consume humans and
human corpses, digging up bodies from shallow graves. This habit of raiding graves caused
the villagers of Komodo to move their graves from sandy to clay ground and pile
rocks on top of them to deter the lizards. The Komodo dragon may have evolved
to feed on the extinct dwarf
elephant Stegodon that
once lived on Flores, according to evolutionary biologist Jared
Diamond. Komodo dragons eat by tearing large chunks of flesh
and swallowing them whole while holding the carcass down with their forelegs.
For smaller prey up to the size of a goat, their loosely articulated jaws,
flexible skulls, and expandable stomachs allow them to swallow prey whole. The
vegetable contents of the stomach and intestines are typically avoided.Copious
amounts of red saliva the Komodo dragons produce help to lubricate the food,
but swallowing is still a long process (15–20 minutes to swallow a goat).
The female lays
her eggs in burrows cut into the side of a hill or in the abandoned nesting
mounds of the Orange-footed Scrubfowl (a
moundbuilder or megapode),
with a preference for the abandoned mounds. Clutches
contain an average of 20 eggs, which have an incubation period of 7–8 months.
Hatching is an exhausting effort for the neonates, which break out of their
eggshells with an egg
tooth that
falls off soon after. After cutting out, the hatchlings may lie in their
eggshells for hours before starting to dig out of the nest. They are born quite
defenseless and are vulnerable to predation.
Young Komodo dragons spend much of
their first few years in trees, where they are relatively safe from predators,
including cannibalistic adults, which make juvenile dragons 10% of their
diets.According to David Attenborough,
the habit of cannibalism may be advantageous in sustaining the large size of
adults, as medium-sized prey on the islands is rare.When the young approach a
kill, they roll around in fecal matter and rest in the intestines of
eviscerated animals to deter these hungry adults. Komodo dragons take approximately
three to five years to mature, and may live for up to 50 years.
source : wikipedia and google
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