Komodo Island tours. Dragon on Komodo Island forest walking at camera. Komodo Islands Indonesia

Indonesia has about 18,000 islands. Komodo lizards live only on five of them, closer to the center of the Indonesian archipelago: on the island of Komodo itself, on the neighboring island of Rinca, on the island of Gili Motang, and finally on tiny island Flores. This is the largest of the currently existing lizards in the world, some representatives of this species can grow more than 3 meters in length and weigh more than 100 kilograms. However, in captivity, these lizards reach even larger sizes - the largest known specimen, for which there is reliable data, was contained in the St. Louis Zoo and had a length of 3.13 m and weighed 166 kg. The natives of the islands call it the "land crocodile".

The unique Komodo National Park is known worldwide, protected by UNESCO, and includes a group of islands with adjacent warm waters and coral reefs of over 170 thousand hectares. Currently, due to a sharp reduction in the number of large wild ungulates on the islands due to poaching, even adult monitor lizards males are forced to switch to smaller prey. Hunger sometimes causes death of monitor lizards.

Of course, other, no less interesting animals are found on Komodo Island, although in most cases they nevertheless inevitably remain in the shadow of the main ruler of these places. The main feature of the natural world of Komodo Island is that it is transitional between the flora and fauna of the Australian-Asian Oceania and Asia: most of the mammals living on the island are Asian in origin, while birds and reptiles are mostly Australian.

Komodo and Rinca Islands are the largest in the reserve. Their main attraction - the "dragons", giant monitor lizards, not found anywhere else on the planet. The Komodo monitor lizard, or the giant Indonesian monitor lizard, or the Komodos monitor lizard (Latin Varanus komodoensis) is a species of lizards from the monitor lizard family.

For centuries, the Chinese came to Komodo in search of precious pearls. Returning to their homeland, they told stories about big scaly, fire-breathing monster-cannibals - there is an opinion that these stories are the basis of the Chinese dragon myth, or at least reinforce it. No wonder that in those days they seemed to people to be real monsters. After all, what they had to meet was a huge creature covered with scales, a cannibal, and although in reality the Komodo dragon does not spew fire, his breath is really smelly than any other creature known to man.

If someone is bitten by a Komodo monitor lizard, then he really should wait for serious trouble. They all the time expire smelly, extremely nasty saliva, oozing around the edges of their sinister mouth. According to the latest calculations, the devil's potion emitted by him contains at least 57 different types of deadly poisonous bacteria. They are so poisonous that without emergency medical care wounds will never heal, therefore, in the absence of emergency treatment, the chances of dying from blood poisoning or infection are more than real.

On top of that, according to a recent study, the Komodo dragons may themselves be poisonous - that is, in fact, they are the biggest poisonous creatures on the planet. For the first time, scientists have found in their mouths glands that produce poison as potent as some of the most dangerous snakes on Earth. Komodo lizard: born to kill. The average length of the Komodo monitor lizard is 2.25 - 2.6 meters, weight is 35-60 kg. With good nutrition, the animal grows up to 3 meters and weighs more than a hundred kilograms.

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