48 Fun Facts About Komodo Dragon

Which broadcaster first showed British viewers a Komodo dragon, in the early BBC series Zoo Quest for a Dragon?

David Attenborough's dragon footage went out in black and white, yet it had been shot on colour film, which lay forgotten in the BBC's vaults until 2015.

Komodo dragons are native to islands in which country?

Indonesia: though it is the biggest lizard on Earth, the dragon went unnoticed by Western science until the twentieth century.

The Komodo dragon belongs to which lizard family?

Monitors are the family that also includes Australia's perentie and lace monitor and Africa's Nile monitor.

A fully grown Komodo dragon reaches roughly what length?

3 m (10 ft): at that size an adult has nothing to fear on its islands, where it sits at the top of the food chain with no predator of its own.

What is the main prey of adult Komodo dragons in the wild?

Javan rusa deer and feral pigs top the menu: a dragon lies in wait beside a game trail, then lunges at whatever walks past.

Why do young Komodo dragons spend their early years up in trees?

To stay clear of cannibal adults: grown dragons readily eat smaller ones but are too heavy to climb, so hatchlings head straight up the nearest trunk.

Young Komodo dragons give themselves an off-putting smell by rolling in what?

Faeces: bigger dragons steer clear of the stink, so a well-rolled youngster is left alone.

After science described the Komodo dragon, Dutch officials did what?

Protected it: officials realised how few dragons existed, so sport hunting was banned and collecting for science tightly limited.

In 2021 the IUCN Red List moved the Komodo dragon to which category?

Endangered: it had been listed as Vulnerable, but rising seas are expected to swallow a large share of its low-lying island habitat.

Komodo National Park holds which status?

World Heritage Site: the UNESCO listing covers more than the lizards, taking in coral reefs, dugongs, whales and sea turtles in the waters around the islands.

Islanders' old name for the Komodo dragon, 'buaya darat', translates as what?

A 'land crocodile': buaya is Malay for crocodile and darat means land, a fair description of a three-metre reptile that hunts ashore.

After digesting a kill, a Komodo dragon coughs up a slimy pellet of horns, hair and teeth, much like which bird?

An owl: neither animal can break down hair, horn or teeth, so the leftovers come back up as a foul pellet, which the dragon wipes off its face in the dirt.

Joan Procter, a pioneering reptile curator of the 1920s, handled and studied live Komodo dragons at which zoo?

London Zoo: Procter designed its Reptile House, and in 1928 she brought a living dragon before a meeting of the Zoological Society.

A 1926 expedition to Komodo Island that returned with preserved and live specimens inspired which 1933 film?

King Kong: producer Merian C. Cooper read his friend Douglas Burden's account of hunting the dragons and imagined a giant gorilla battling lizards like them.

How do rival Komodo dragons fight over mates in the breeding season?

Wrestling upright on their hind legs: propped on their tails, the rivals grapple chest to chest until one is thrown to the ground.

Where does an adult Komodo dragon usually spend the night?

In a burrow it has dug: the snug hole holds body heat overnight, so the cold-blooded giant needs less basking before the morning hunt.

How much of a big carcass does a Komodo dragon usually eat?

Nearly all of it, bones included: a dragon bolts down hide and hoof alike, leaving scavengers little more than scraps.

Beyond the national park, wild Komodo dragons survive on which larger island, also known for its 'hobbit' fossils?

Flores: dragons cling on along its western and northern coasts, where they lack the park's protection and human activity keeps eating into their habitat.

Fossils show the Komodo dragon once lived where, alongside the giant lizard megalania?

Australia: Queensland fossils match the living dragon, so it seems to have grown huge on the mainland and spread west, not ballooned on small islands as once thought.

A Komodo dragon's short, serrated teeth are often likened to those of which predator?

A shark: the teeth are flat, curved blades with saw edges, built to slice through flesh as the dragon bites down and pulls back, not to grip and hold.

What colour is a Komodo dragon's forked tongue?

Yellow: just under that tongue sits the opening of a breathing tube, so a dragon can keep taking in air with its mouth crammed full of food.

A Komodo dragon's skin is reinforced by tiny bones called what?

Osteoderms: scans show the bony beads link up like chain mail in adults, while babies have none, which suggests the armour is for fights with other dragons.

A 2024 study found Komodo dragon tooth serrations are coated with what?

Iron: an orange, iron-rich layer along the serrations protects the thin enamel beneath, so the blades stay sharp enough to slice through flesh.

What happens when a Komodo dragon loses a tooth?

A spare replaces it: replacements queue up behind every tooth, and a dragon gets through several full sets of teeth in a lifetime.

How does a Komodo dragon pick up the scent of a distant carcass?

Flicking its tongue in the air: the forked tips carry scent molecules to sense organs in the roof of the mouth, so the dragon in effect smells by tasting.

Why does a Komodo dragon ambush prey instead of chasing it down?

It sprints only briefly: the charge is fast but short, so a dragon hides beside a trail for hours and strikes at close range.

Up to what proportion of its own body mass can a Komodo dragon eat in a single meal?

80%: jaws that gape unusually wide and a stomach that stretches like a sack let an adult gorge on most of its own weight in one sitting.

A large Komodo dragon can get by on roughly how many big meals?

One a month: a cold-blooded body burns so little fuel that a single carcass can keep a big dragon going for weeks.

What is the largest prey a Komodo dragon will take on?

A water buffalo: far too big to kill outright, it usually escapes the first attack, so the dragon simply trails the wounded animal until it weakens.

During the Pleistocene, Komodo dragons are thought to have preyed mainly on dwarf species of what?

Stegodon, an elephant relative: island life shrank these tuskers to pygmy size, and they were the only big game around until people shipped in the animals dragons hunt today.

Research in 2013 concluded that the bacteria in Komodo dragon mouths are what?

Ordinary, like other carnivores': swabs from zoo dragons turned up nothing unusual, and the team called the famous septic bite a fairy tale that had been taken as gospel.

In 2009, MRI scans of a Komodo dragon's head led researchers to report venom glands in which part of it?

Lower jaw: the team reported glands seeping proteins that stop blood clotting and send blood pressure plunging, so a bitten animal bleeds freely and slides into shock.

How strong is a Komodo dragon's bite next to a same-size saltwater crocodile's?

A sixth as strong: computer models of its light skull give a bite far feebler than a crocodile's, but the same skull copes well with tugging, so the dragon bites, then rips backwards.

Medical researchers have studied Komodo dragon blood in the hope of developing new what?

Antibiotics: a germ-killing peptide found in the blood inspired a lab-made version, DRGN-1, which helped infected wounds heal faster in tests on mice.

Where do solitary Komodo dragons usually find a mate?

At a big kill: a rotting carcass draws dragons from all over, and the feast is one of the few times these loners gather, so courtship starts there.

Female Komodo dragons often lay their eggs in the big nest mounds built by which bird?

Orange-footed scrubfowl: this chicken-like megapode heaps up soil and rotting leaves to warm its own eggs, so a dragon that moves in gets a ready-made incubator.

What does a Komodo dragon do after burying her eggs?

Guards the nest: she stays for months and may dig dummy chambers to mislead egg thieves, yet once the young hatch they get no help from her.

Flora, a Komodo dragon that produced healthy eggs in 2006 despite never having a mate, lived at which English zoo?

Chester Zoo: genetic tests showed the embryos carried only Flora's own DNA, and the discovery led scientists to advise zoos against housing female dragons on their own.

A Komodo dragon that breeds without a mate has hatchlings of which sex?

Male: a virgin birth doubles up one of the mother's sex chromosomes, and only the male pairing survives, so a lone castaway could in theory found a colony with her sons.

How do Komodo dragon hatchlings look next to the grey adults?

Green with bold bands: hatchlings wear bright markings, then fade to a plain grey-brown as they grow up and come down from the trees.

Komodo National Park data for 1974 to 2012 recorded how many attacks on humans?

Most victims were villagers living around the park; juveniles flee if a person gets within about 100 metres.

A Komodo dragon's eyes are best at picking out what?

Anything that moves: its eyes are poor at picking out things that keep still and weak in dim light, which suits a hunter that is active by day.

In 2001 a Komodo dragon at Los Angeles Zoo bit the foot of Phil Bronstein, then married to which actress?

Sharon Stone: she had arranged the behind-the-scenes visit as a present, and later told how a keeper had him take off his white shoes in case they looked like the dragon's white-rat meals.

Which of these joined Komodo on the New 7 Wonders of Nature list, chosen by a worldwide public vote?

The Amazon rainforest: the dragons' island home also made the final seven, ahead of finalists as famous as the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef and the Galápagos Islands.

Besides Komodo and Rinca, which is the third large island inside Komodo National Park?

The park adds 26 smaller islands to those three; the dragon population on Padar itself died out, last seen in 1975.

Scientists study the Komodo dragon's curved, serrated teeth as a living guide to the teeth of which extinct animals?

Meat-eating dinosaurs: they too had curved, saw-edged blades with only a thin layer of enamel, so the living lizard stands in for fossils when scientists test how such teeth coped.

How does a Komodo dragon's hearing compare with a person's?

It covers a far narrower range: a dragon misses both low voices and high-pitched screams, which matters little to a hunter that finds nearly everything by scent.

How does a Komodo dragon try to make a rival back down before a fight starts?

Puffing itself up: it flattens its body, swells its throat pouch and hisses to look as big as possible, and the smaller animal usually backs off before a blow lands.