Komodo Dragons - Part Two
CuriousOyster
Steve & Trish Brown
Thu 15 Sep 2011 23:24
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From the south of Rinca island we sailed north to a
bay where there
is a ranger station
and national park, we found a really beautiful, safe,
secure anchorage
The Komodo Dragons only live on the two islands of Komodo and
Rinca and the national park is where the BBC filmed the dragons for
one of their documentaries
 On our way to the ranger station we met
some of the local people on
their fishing boats, they appear to catch almost anything, we
saw a
Pufferfish, a Blue Spotted Ray,and a
Batfish, there was also this Sea
Snake
 We met the Longtailed Macaques who gather near
the pontoon waiting
for peanuts, which they squabble over, the little ones tend to
miss out
 We were introduced to our two guides,
they carry a forked stick to fend
off the Dragons, the
fork can be used to push them away by the neck,
the nose or the tail
One of the guides told us about the ranger station,
the dragons, the
five km walk round
the National Park, the do's and don'ts and what we
might expect to see
 Not far along the path a Komodo Dragon was warming
itself in the early
morning sun, after a night sleeping amongst the trees
 The guides threw stones at him until he moved out
of our way
 As this is the end of the dry season, the wet
season begins in the middle
of October, there is
very little water in the park, this Water Buffalo
had
gratefully found
some water
 While we were taking photographs of him
a Komodo dragon came along,
they gazed at each
other for a while then the dragon obviously
decided he
was too small to
take on a fully grown Buffalo by himself and
left
The Buffalo would have ended up like this, had the
dragon stayed
 Komodo dragon females lay between fifteen and
thirty eggs in holes in the
ground, once the
eggs hatch the baby dragons quickly
climb the trees out
of harms way, even
the mother at this stage would eat them if she got the
opportunity
They stay in the trees living off insects and
small lizards until they are big
enough to climb down
and fend for
themselves
The dragons are carnivores and eat anything that moves, they are known to
work as a team on, maybe, a herd of Water Buffalo, they bite one or
two to
poison them with their venomous saliva and then stalk them for days
until
they fall
They can grow up to three meters long and fifty
kilos in weight, a fully grown
dragon can eat
up to forty kilos of deer or buffalo in one go and they live
between forty and fifty
years
 They are scary, amazing creatures! |