February 18, 2010 • 15 mins
Located in Indonesia, Komodo dragons are one of nature's fiercest living reptiles. They're also the world's largest lizard. Tune in as Robert and Allison investigate the unique lifestyle -- and brutal dining habits -- of the Komodo dragon.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey, this is Alison I don't know,
like the science and how stuff works dot com. And
this is Robert Lamb, science writer at how stuff works
dot com. So, Alison, you've got a dog, right, do
(00:22):
you have a dog? Yeah? I have. I have a
cat myself, And I think one thing that these two
species sharing and in common is the ability to vomit,
like on a daily basis, And not now the the ability,
but just the willingness and sheer desire to vomit. Yeah,
it does seem like I spent a lot of my
life these days cleaning up accidents, either of the pet
(00:45):
or children variety. The thing that gets to me about
the cat is that she will only vomit on things
like carpet or like we have hardwoods and then we
have like some areas of carpet, and like she will
you'll hear like vomiting. I would be in the night
and I'll hear of her warming up to the vomit,
and I'll and I'll wake up. I could be in
like a deep dream state and I'll wake up and
(01:06):
I'll be all right. She's in the house, she's about
to vomit. So I go and find her, and she'll
be on this little rug right about the up shut
And I take her off, and I set her on
the hardwoods, because at least she vomits on the hard woods.
Clean up, easy to clean up. Set her on the hardwood,
and she scampers over to another carpet, like she can
only throw up on a carpet. It is true, they
do display a remarkable propensity for display for for puking
on carpet. Why is that there are dogs the same way? Yeah,
(01:28):
they are. They love to to throw up on a carpet.
But the point of this barthring anecdote is that mixed
both of us pretty glad that we don't have Commodo dragons,
because you know, cat throp dog throp is nothing compared
to what you might see, uh, come out of a
Komodo dragon after it eights a a goat. Yeah. And
if you're wondering how this looks like, do a YouTube
(01:49):
search for Komodo dragon and vomit and you'll get to
see a lovely video set to some really really interesting
musical choice vomiting up a part fully digested goat leg. So,
now that we've thoroughly upset your stomach. Let's tell you
why we're talking about Commodo dragons. Robert and I over
at has to First dot Com have been immersed in
(02:10):
um writing content for this upcoming really neat series that's
going to premiere on the Discovery Channel called Life. You
watch Planet Earth and this is this is the same
bunch of people, the same just completely addictive thing, beautiful
footage of just some of the amazing tidbits from our
natural world. Right it's a planet Earth was habitat focused,
and Life will be focused on the amazing species populating
(02:35):
our planet and their remarkable behaviors. And in one of
the episodes on reptiles and amphibians, the komodo dragon is
prominently featured. Yeah, and Robert and I were very very
impressed by the Commodo dragons because you see them in
the zoo and you know they're not doing much. Maybe
they're fed of frozen rat or something. They're kind of lethargic,
as they tend to be cold blooded. They're not exerting
(02:57):
any more energy than they need to. And let me
point out, at least they have the excuse of being
cold blooded. On like the panda which just sits there,
warm blooded, not doing anything and gets all the attention.
That's a separate tangent. But anyway, so we really wanted
to do a podcast on those crazy Komodos that we've
been writing about. And just for those of you're interested,
the series is going to premiere in March. Unless you
(03:17):
know of your British you've already seen it. So let's
give you a greick introduction to the Komodo dragon. The
komodo is about nine feet long. It lives over on
unlimited range of islands in Indonesia, one of which is
Komodo Island, and it's the most intelligent and the largest
lizard in the world. Yeah, and this, uh, this is
a top predator we're talking about here. The only thing
that eats Komodo dragons, it's other commodo dragons. I mean,
(03:41):
unless you're going into some pretty strange restaurants, you're not
going to find it on the menu. Um. And when
I say they eat other Komodo dragons, like like a
lot of species, they'll eat their their own if they
happen to be wounded or weak or dead. Uh, the
Komodo dragon is really big commodo dragon will eat fresh food,
it'll it'll kill something an idiot. But if it's something's
been setting around on it's a little rotten, you know.
The commodo dragons not gonna I'm not gonna pass that up.
(04:04):
So yeah, it'll eat up. It'll eat one of its
its own of its rotting on the side of the path.
But they're also quite fond of their own young. A
female kommoto dragon will lay the eggs in a burrow
and then just leave them. Komodos dragons have no further
role in the raising of the young, so it's not
practicing touchment parenting right now. If there's definitely mammal they
(04:25):
want to practice like ingestion parenting because if they find
any of the smaller like a hatchling komotos, they will
eat them up. So well, how does the hatchling prevent this? Well,
they have to two methods. One method is to pretty
much live in the trees, and the kimotos can climb
trees when they really want to, but these guys will
stay up in the higher branches and just stay out
(04:45):
of side. The other tactic is of course to roll
themselves in fecal matter, because it's like the Kommoto dragon
will eat just about anything, but it's not that big
on eating things that are that are you know, covered
in app More on that later. Um, it's a great podcast.
You get your vomit and your crab content on one.
(05:07):
So yeah, in terms of other things they'll eat, though,
they'll they'll take down at um, things like like deer,
they'll take down you know, rats or whatever, you know,
smaller animals. But then they'll even take down water buffalo occasionally.
And we're gonna get more into the hunting technique bees
in a minute, because it just just like takes weeks
(05:27):
while they wait for the thing to die, and then
when it's time to eat it, they just throw themselves
at it, the big ones. Anyway, you end up having
this kind of like circle of feeding with the komodos. Yeah,
it's communal, but it's not really generous per se. No, No,
it's not. It's not like a Thanksgiving dinner or not
like my Thanksgiving dinners. Some families probably do it differently.
It would be like if your Thanksgiving dinner consists of
(05:49):
like your three largest uncles rolling around in a carcass
and throwing elbows and then like the smaller members of
the family are on the grandma oscar. Yeah, Grandma's an outscars,
just trying to like reach in and grasp a chicken leg.
And then all the little kids are just out in
the bushes hoping that there are other family members. Don't
eat them while they're waiting for scraps. That's pretty much
(06:10):
what you have. And they will eat pretty much everything.
These guys clean their plates. Researchers have observed them eating
uppers of eight percent of their own body weight. Like
when they're through, they're just completely like dragging gut back
to their burrows there. It's just amazing. These guys have recliners.
Would be billing up for hours in front of the the
(06:30):
TV after Yeah, and and it's in the things they
can't necessarily digest everything. They can digest a lot, but
like say they eat some hide, some bone, some antlers
or something, they can't digest that. So a little later
they just vomited all up. And this uh, just disgusting
smelling ball known as a gastric pellet. Yeah, but it
(06:50):
doesn't really look like a pellet. It more looks like
a like a basketball made of half digested goat. There
are some animals out there that aren't big on eating
the actual guts of an animal. Um. The komodo will.
But like we said earlier, that the little ones roll
around in the crap so that they won't get eaten.
So the komodo before it will eat the intestines, it
will take them in its mouth and sling them around. Yeah,
(07:12):
so that all the fecal matter goes flying out into
the forest. And then once it's nice and clean, they'll
they'll eat the guts as well. They'll partake of the intestineous.
They are ravenous and vile creatures, but we still love
them amazingly cool too. So let's talk about some of
their hunting techniques. I mean, how would a komodo dragon
(07:35):
take down a water buffalo? So a live one, because
like we said, they'll eat the dead one, but a
live water buffalo is a different proposition. Well, part of
it is ambush. I mean really, all they need to
do is they need to sit around and wait for
some great ambling beasts to come by, and they need
to land one good bye. And why do they need
to land one good bite? Well because they have venom
(07:55):
and their mouths are really just this crazy cottail of
bacteria and venom. So even if the bite doesn't kill
the animal instantly, the venom and the bacteria will do
their work and the animal, no matter how big, will
likely die. I think it takes a goat sized animal
about four days. Um. The buffalo took took much longer
(08:16):
than that. But again, you can watch this in life.
It's really an amazing scene. It's a mouthful of just
serrated peece too, so it's a pretty nasty bite anyway,
even if it's like a mouthful steak knives or something
dirty nasty snake knives. Yeah, And some of the toxins
in there, one of them causes intestinal cramps and it
makes the animal, the prey, more sensitive to pain. And
(08:37):
then you have another toxin in there that causes hypothermia.
And then of course, as if that weren't enough, um,
other toxins will make the animal just bleed like crazy,
and from the outside like the prey looks stunned and
which is kind of quiet. Yeah. One of the interesting
things about the like the water buffalo that they study
in life is that they actually observed the wound healing up,
(09:00):
but the but the venom was doing its work inside
the animal. So so beside the venom, we have stuff
like the tongue. Um. So if you're not hanging out
at a watering hole with a great big water buffle,
you have to find your prey right well, the tongue
is actually the komotives smelling mechanism, So kind of get
(09:21):
in your head this picture of a lizard flicking its
tongue out. So what it's doing with its tongue is
it's flicking out and it's catching air molecules and then
it's scraping them on the inside of its mouth and
it's analyzing them essentially, and the fork tongue is giving
you directions for example, like if the tongue's left fork
has more scent molecules, then the dragon knows you're hiding
(09:43):
on the left, and so it's just constantly flicking its
tongue back and forth to follow its prey. It's kind
of like smells in three D. Yeah, it's a it's
a funky tongue. And then of course we have the teeth.
You know, once you once you get in close to
the to the prey, if then you can land that bite.
But their their teeth are and jaws are really not
that impressive. I mean, they have the steak news and everything,
(10:03):
but the bite itself is I think similar to a
cat's strength. It's it's not very it's not very strong.
What really is the secret weapon is the vatam. So
once the Commodo dragon eats its prey and I mean
eating kind of loosely because it doesn't choose before swallowing,
it just kind of ingest cole like a snake, it
(10:23):
can unhinge its jaws and it can open them to
swallow these just like ginormous chunks of meat that are
larger than their heads. Yeah, it's like Poko to Chow
or any of those big steak chains, you know, right, So,
can you picture yourself going to one of these, like
Brazilian meat places and unhinging your jaw because, like, you know,
imbibing whole this giant steak. Yeah, that's kind of what
(10:44):
the commoted is. Generally one table of Commodo dragons, and
most major steak restaurants like that don't sit next to them.
Once it ingests this huge mass of meat, it travels
undigested to the stomach, and the stomach you know, stretches
as it as its needs to do, and there's a
very powerful stomach acid there which can dissolve a lot
(11:04):
of those crazy parts at the Komodo just state, but
not everything, as Robert has thoughtfully pointed out, tell me
about the people who are shipwrecked on the on the
island with Commodo dragons. Yeah, so there's a news story
of ways back about some divers who were left stranded
on a diving expedition. They swam to shore and who
they're so excited they finally made land, and um, they
(11:25):
had to wait for a rescue. I guess somebody. I
don't I don't know how they got said rescue, but
they got onto this island, and the island happened to
be populated by Komodo dragons, and the Komodo dragons, of
course have this very keen sense of smell, and they
were able to spot the divers. And so for the
next few days, while the divers waited for a rescue,
they had to fight off Komodo dragons by like screaming
(11:46):
at them and throwing rocks at them. So can you imagine,
I mean, you finally swim to shore, you know, you're
on tropical islands kind of like lost. Yeah, perhaps except
the shorter duration. If you're on the island of the
Komodo Us and eventually you get saved, but not before
having to fight off committed dragons. They're not above taking
on human prey, especially if if you're wounded and they're
(12:08):
protected species. So you get shipwrecked on an island full
of komotos, you can't very well just go around braining
them in the head with rocks and frying them up yourself,
and good luck competing with them, right, So did you
interview the guy, Yeah, you interviewed one of the uh,
the cameraman on that particular shoot, and it really really
really fascinating story, just the filming of it because they
(12:31):
had to just they had to march miles to this site,
to this watering hole every day. They couldn't actually spend
the night out there because it was too dangerous. Um
you know, they had to stay at this camp. So
they're lugging all this equipment out and then they ended
up just having to wait for this to happen, wait
for these komotos too, because the water buffalo is is
a pretty dangerous prey. It can trample the dragon, it
(12:54):
can can Yeah, So, like I said, they're opportunists. So
it's like it's a matter of one of these dragons
getting cocky enough and hungry enough to dare to take
that bite, and then it's weeks of waiting for the
thing to die. And so they had to sit there
and wait for the water buffalo to die and and
trail it all over the island. Yeah, and they end
up getting really attached. I mean maybe not attached, but
(13:16):
you know, if you're watching like a pack of you know,
eight komotos um, you know, waiting to devour a water
buffalo basically devour it alive, you know, who are you
gonna sympathize with? Not the dragon really so um. So
there was a whole emotional side to that. And then
just just being around like too dangerous creatures because water
buffalo gets stooked, it can run you over. Uh. And
(13:39):
the komodos, like I said, they're not opposed to taking
a bite out of a human if the opportunity presents itself.
Did the staff have any close calls. Yeah, yeah, they did. Well,
they had some some local guides that came along with
him with sticks. Uh. We just kind of like push
them out of the way if they got too close
to the camera. But there was one scene he was
telling me about where, um, this was early in the chase.
I guess the water buffalo sor hat a fair amount
(14:00):
of energy and the water buffalo was moving through the
forest and the komodos we're chasing after it. So the cameraman,
the life camera crew, they just said, hey, let's we're
gonna flank this this this buffalo, get ahead of it,
film it coming towards us, and then we'll film the
komodos following it. And I think it was like like
there were five komodos trailing the water buffalo at that time.
(14:21):
So he gets ahead and they booth get ahead, they
set up the camera and they only see four komodo
dragons and yeah, yeah, and then one of the dudes
it's like like, hey, they're just four. And then another
guy goes goes, hey, you know behind you look, it
turns around and there's a komodo coming right behind him.
Like the komodo had the same plan as the cameraman
to flank the prey and you know, one bite from
(14:43):
those guys and uh, you know it's not a pretty picture. Yeah,
so you guys are gonna have to check out Life
when It comes out, because it's a pretty amazing series.
Might even make you want to get a pet Komodo.
I don't know. I think on that one you'll look
pretty awesome being the only person in your neighborhood with
a Komodo on a chain. Yeah, definitely. So if you
have any thoughts about commotives or just want to send
(15:03):
us an email, you know where to find us signed
stuff at how stuff works dot com, or brush up
on commotive at um over at the site, or come
check out the blogs. We're gonna be blogging quite a
bit about Life when It Starts, aaring and uh, as
well as any other interesting scientific kidbit that comes our way.
All right, thanks for listening, guys. For more on this
(15:28):
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
Welcome to stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey, this is Alison I don't know,
like the science and how stuff works dot com. And
this is Robert Lamb, science writer at how stuff works
dot com. So, Alison, you've got a dog, right, do
(00:22):
you have a dog? Yeah? I have. I have a
cat myself, And I think one thing that these two
species sharing and in common is the ability to vomit,
like on a daily basis, And not now the the ability,
but just the willingness and sheer desire to vomit. Yeah,
it does seem like I spent a lot of my
life these days cleaning up accidents, either of the pet
(00:45):
or children variety. The thing that gets to me about
the cat is that she will only vomit on things
like carpet or like we have hardwoods and then we
have like some areas of carpet, and like she will
you'll hear like vomiting. I would be in the night
and I'll hear of her warming up to the vomit,
and I'll and I'll wake up. I could be in
like a deep dream state and I'll wake up and
(01:06):
I'll be all right. She's in the house, she's about
to vomit. So I go and find her, and she'll
be on this little rug right about the up shut
And I take her off, and I set her on
the hardwoods, because at least she vomits on the hard woods.
Clean up, easy to clean up. Set her on the hardwood,
and she scampers over to another carpet, like she can
only throw up on a carpet. It is true, they
do display a remarkable propensity for display for for puking
on carpet. Why is that there are dogs the same way? Yeah,
(01:28):
they are. They love to to throw up on a carpet.
But the point of this barthring anecdote is that mixed
both of us pretty glad that we don't have Commodo dragons,
because you know, cat throp dog throp is nothing compared
to what you might see, uh, come out of a
Komodo dragon after it eights a a goat. Yeah. And
if you're wondering how this looks like, do a YouTube
(01:49):
search for Komodo dragon and vomit and you'll get to
see a lovely video set to some really really interesting
musical choice vomiting up a part fully digested goat leg. So,
now that we've thoroughly upset your stomach. Let's tell you
why we're talking about Commodo dragons. Robert and I over
at has to First dot Com have been immersed in
(02:10):
um writing content for this upcoming really neat series that's
going to premiere on the Discovery Channel called Life. You
watch Planet Earth and this is this is the same
bunch of people, the same just completely addictive thing, beautiful
footage of just some of the amazing tidbits from our
natural world. Right it's a planet Earth was habitat focused,
and Life will be focused on the amazing species populating
(02:35):
our planet and their remarkable behaviors. And in one of
the episodes on reptiles and amphibians, the komodo dragon is
prominently featured. Yeah, and Robert and I were very very
impressed by the Commodo dragons because you see them in
the zoo and you know they're not doing much. Maybe
they're fed of frozen rat or something. They're kind of lethargic,
as they tend to be cold blooded. They're not exerting
(02:57):
any more energy than they need to. And let me
point out, at least they have the excuse of being
cold blooded. On like the panda which just sits there,
warm blooded, not doing anything and gets all the attention.
That's a separate tangent. But anyway, so we really wanted
to do a podcast on those crazy Komodos that we've
been writing about. And just for those of you're interested,
the series is going to premiere in March. Unless you
(03:17):
know of your British you've already seen it. So let's
give you a greick introduction to the Komodo dragon. The
komodo is about nine feet long. It lives over on
unlimited range of islands in Indonesia, one of which is
Komodo Island, and it's the most intelligent and the largest
lizard in the world. Yeah, and this, uh, this is
a top predator we're talking about here. The only thing
that eats Komodo dragons, it's other commodo dragons. I mean,
(03:41):
unless you're going into some pretty strange restaurants, you're not
going to find it on the menu. Um. And when
I say they eat other Komodo dragons, like like a
lot of species, they'll eat their their own if they
happen to be wounded or weak or dead. Uh, the
Komodo dragon is really big commodo dragon will eat fresh food,
it'll it'll kill something an idiot. But if it's something's
been setting around on it's a little rotten, you know.
The commodo dragons not gonna I'm not gonna pass that up.
(04:04):
So yeah, it'll eat up. It'll eat one of its
its own of its rotting on the side of the path.
But they're also quite fond of their own young. A
female kommoto dragon will lay the eggs in a burrow
and then just leave them. Komodos dragons have no further
role in the raising of the young, so it's not
practicing touchment parenting right now. If there's definitely mammal they
(04:25):
want to practice like ingestion parenting because if they find
any of the smaller like a hatchling komotos, they will
eat them up. So well, how does the hatchling prevent this? Well,
they have to two methods. One method is to pretty
much live in the trees, and the kimotos can climb
trees when they really want to, but these guys will
stay up in the higher branches and just stay out
(04:45):
of side. The other tactic is of course to roll
themselves in fecal matter, because it's like the Kommoto dragon
will eat just about anything, but it's not that big
on eating things that are that are you know, covered
in app More on that later. Um, it's a great podcast.
You get your vomit and your crab content on one.
(05:07):
So yeah, in terms of other things they'll eat, though,
they'll they'll take down at um, things like like deer,
they'll take down you know, rats or whatever, you know,
smaller animals. But then they'll even take down water buffalo occasionally.
And we're gonna get more into the hunting technique bees
in a minute, because it just just like takes weeks
(05:27):
while they wait for the thing to die, and then
when it's time to eat it, they just throw themselves
at it, the big ones. Anyway, you end up having
this kind of like circle of feeding with the komodos. Yeah,
it's communal, but it's not really generous per se. No, No,
it's not. It's not like a Thanksgiving dinner or not
like my Thanksgiving dinners. Some families probably do it differently.
It would be like if your Thanksgiving dinner consists of
(05:49):
like your three largest uncles rolling around in a carcass
and throwing elbows and then like the smaller members of
the family are on the grandma oscar. Yeah, Grandma's an outscars,
just trying to like reach in and grasp a chicken leg.
And then all the little kids are just out in
the bushes hoping that there are other family members. Don't
eat them while they're waiting for scraps. That's pretty much
(06:10):
what you have. And they will eat pretty much everything.
These guys clean their plates. Researchers have observed them eating
uppers of eight percent of their own body weight. Like
when they're through, they're just completely like dragging gut back
to their burrows there. It's just amazing. These guys have recliners.
Would be billing up for hours in front of the the
(06:30):
TV after Yeah, and and it's in the things they
can't necessarily digest everything. They can digest a lot, but
like say they eat some hide, some bone, some antlers
or something, they can't digest that. So a little later
they just vomited all up. And this uh, just disgusting
smelling ball known as a gastric pellet. Yeah, but it
(06:50):
doesn't really look like a pellet. It more looks like
a like a basketball made of half digested goat. There
are some animals out there that aren't big on eating
the actual guts of an animal. Um. The komodo will.
But like we said earlier, that the little ones roll
around in the crap so that they won't get eaten.
So the komodo before it will eat the intestines, it
will take them in its mouth and sling them around. Yeah,
(07:12):
so that all the fecal matter goes flying out into
the forest. And then once it's nice and clean, they'll
they'll eat the guts as well. They'll partake of the intestineous.
They are ravenous and vile creatures, but we still love
them amazingly cool too. So let's talk about some of
their hunting techniques. I mean, how would a komodo dragon
(07:35):
take down a water buffalo? So a live one, because
like we said, they'll eat the dead one, but a
live water buffalo is a different proposition. Well, part of
it is ambush. I mean really, all they need to
do is they need to sit around and wait for
some great ambling beasts to come by, and they need
to land one good bye. And why do they need
to land one good bite? Well because they have venom
(07:55):
and their mouths are really just this crazy cottail of
bacteria and venom. So even if the bite doesn't kill
the animal instantly, the venom and the bacteria will do
their work and the animal, no matter how big, will
likely die. I think it takes a goat sized animal
about four days. Um. The buffalo took took much longer
(08:16):
than that. But again, you can watch this in life.
It's really an amazing scene. It's a mouthful of just
serrated peece too, so it's a pretty nasty bite anyway,
even if it's like a mouthful steak knives or something
dirty nasty snake knives. Yeah, And some of the toxins
in there, one of them causes intestinal cramps and it
makes the animal, the prey, more sensitive to pain. And
(08:37):
then you have another toxin in there that causes hypothermia.
And then of course, as if that weren't enough, um,
other toxins will make the animal just bleed like crazy,
and from the outside like the prey looks stunned and
which is kind of quiet. Yeah. One of the interesting
things about the like the water buffalo that they study
in life is that they actually observed the wound healing up,
(09:00):
but the but the venom was doing its work inside
the animal. So so beside the venom, we have stuff
like the tongue. Um. So if you're not hanging out
at a watering hole with a great big water buffle,
you have to find your prey right well, the tongue
is actually the komotives smelling mechanism, So kind of get
(09:21):
in your head this picture of a lizard flicking its
tongue out. So what it's doing with its tongue is
it's flicking out and it's catching air molecules and then
it's scraping them on the inside of its mouth and
it's analyzing them essentially, and the fork tongue is giving
you directions for example, like if the tongue's left fork
has more scent molecules, then the dragon knows you're hiding
(09:43):
on the left, and so it's just constantly flicking its
tongue back and forth to follow its prey. It's kind
of like smells in three D. Yeah, it's a it's
a funky tongue. And then of course we have the teeth.
You know, once you once you get in close to
the to the prey, if then you can land that bite.
But their their teeth are and jaws are really not
that impressive. I mean, they have the steak news and everything,
(10:03):
but the bite itself is I think similar to a
cat's strength. It's it's not very it's not very strong.
What really is the secret weapon is the vatam. So
once the Commodo dragon eats its prey and I mean
eating kind of loosely because it doesn't choose before swallowing,
it just kind of ingest cole like a snake, it
(10:23):
can unhinge its jaws and it can open them to
swallow these just like ginormous chunks of meat that are
larger than their heads. Yeah, it's like Poko to Chow
or any of those big steak chains, you know, right, So,
can you picture yourself going to one of these, like
Brazilian meat places and unhinging your jaw because, like, you know,
imbibing whole this giant steak. Yeah, that's kind of what
(10:44):
the commoted is. Generally one table of Commodo dragons, and
most major steak restaurants like that don't sit next to them.
Once it ingests this huge mass of meat, it travels
undigested to the stomach, and the stomach you know, stretches
as it as its needs to do, and there's a
very powerful stomach acid there which can dissolve a lot
(11:04):
of those crazy parts at the Komodo just state, but
not everything, as Robert has thoughtfully pointed out, tell me
about the people who are shipwrecked on the on the
island with Commodo dragons. Yeah, so there's a news story
of ways back about some divers who were left stranded
on a diving expedition. They swam to shore and who
they're so excited they finally made land, and um, they
(11:25):
had to wait for a rescue. I guess somebody. I
don't I don't know how they got said rescue, but
they got onto this island, and the island happened to
be populated by Komodo dragons, and the Komodo dragons, of
course have this very keen sense of smell, and they
were able to spot the divers. And so for the
next few days, while the divers waited for a rescue,
they had to fight off Komodo dragons by like screaming
(11:46):
at them and throwing rocks at them. So can you imagine,
I mean, you finally swim to shore, you know, you're
on tropical islands kind of like lost. Yeah, perhaps except
the shorter duration. If you're on the island of the
Komodo Us and eventually you get saved, but not before
having to fight off committed dragons. They're not above taking
on human prey, especially if if you're wounded and they're
(12:08):
protected species. So you get shipwrecked on an island full
of komotos, you can't very well just go around braining
them in the head with rocks and frying them up yourself,
and good luck competing with them, right, So did you
interview the guy, Yeah, you interviewed one of the uh,
the cameraman on that particular shoot, and it really really
really fascinating story, just the filming of it because they
(12:31):
had to just they had to march miles to this site,
to this watering hole every day. They couldn't actually spend
the night out there because it was too dangerous. Um
you know, they had to stay at this camp. So
they're lugging all this equipment out and then they ended
up just having to wait for this to happen, wait
for these komotos too, because the water buffalo is is
a pretty dangerous prey. It can trample the dragon, it
(12:54):
can can Yeah, So, like I said, they're opportunists. So
it's like it's a matter of one of these dragons
getting cocky enough and hungry enough to dare to take
that bite, and then it's weeks of waiting for the
thing to die. And so they had to sit there
and wait for the water buffalo to die and and
trail it all over the island. Yeah, and they end
up getting really attached. I mean maybe not attached, but
(13:16):
you know, if you're watching like a pack of you know,
eight komotos um, you know, waiting to devour a water
buffalo basically devour it alive, you know, who are you
gonna sympathize with? Not the dragon really so um. So
there was a whole emotional side to that. And then
just just being around like too dangerous creatures because water
buffalo gets stooked, it can run you over. Uh. And
(13:39):
the komodos, like I said, they're not opposed to taking
a bite out of a human if the opportunity presents itself.
Did the staff have any close calls. Yeah, yeah, they did. Well,
they had some some local guides that came along with
him with sticks. Uh. We just kind of like push
them out of the way if they got too close
to the camera. But there was one scene he was
telling me about where, um, this was early in the chase.
I guess the water buffalo sor hat a fair amount
(14:00):
of energy and the water buffalo was moving through the
forest and the komodos we're chasing after it. So the cameraman,
the life camera crew, they just said, hey, let's we're
gonna flank this this this buffalo, get ahead of it,
film it coming towards us, and then we'll film the
komodos following it. And I think it was like like
there were five komodos trailing the water buffalo at that time.
(14:21):
So he gets ahead and they booth get ahead, they
set up the camera and they only see four komodo
dragons and yeah, yeah, and then one of the dudes
it's like like, hey, they're just four. And then another
guy goes goes, hey, you know behind you look, it
turns around and there's a komodo coming right behind him.
Like the komodo had the same plan as the cameraman
to flank the prey and you know, one bite from
(14:43):
those guys and uh, you know it's not a pretty picture. Yeah,
so you guys are gonna have to check out Life
when It comes out, because it's a pretty amazing series.
Might even make you want to get a pet Komodo.
I don't know. I think on that one you'll look
pretty awesome being the only person in your neighborhood with
a Komodo on a chain. Yeah, definitely. So if you
have any thoughts about commotives or just want to send
(15:03):
us an email, you know where to find us signed
stuff at how stuff works dot com, or brush up
on commotive at um over at the site, or come
check out the blogs. We're gonna be blogging quite a
bit about Life when It Starts, aaring and uh, as
well as any other interesting scientific kidbit that comes our way.
All right, thanks for listening, guys. For more on this
(15:28):
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
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