The process of Komodo dragons killing their prey can be described as painful and long, but the monitor lizards have a long patience, they bite the prey and slowly follow behind them, until the prey "poisoned" death, and then the monitor lizard starts to eat slowly! So there have always been two theories about how Komodo dragons kill their prey!
Is it bacteria or poisoning?
The BBC has a documentary about monitor lizards that quotes the 1981 work of zoologist Auffenberg, who in 1981 discovered the presence of staphylococcus and Proteus in the mouth of the monitor lizard, two unique oral flora of monitor lizards that are a weapon against other animals!
When biting other animals, these bacteria will multiply with the wound into the body of the prey, and after 2 to 3 days, the systemic symptoms of the prey will begin to appear, such as high fever, weakness and finally fall to the ground, followed by the monitor lizard will rush up and bite, and the prey will be eaten by the pieces before it is completely dead, and its condition is unbearable to witness!
From the rate of bacterial reproduction to the appearance of systemic symptoms, the time of 2-3 days is roughly the same, so after 1981, many popular science works on monitor lizards and documentaries have cited the saying that Komodo oral bacteria multiply and die.
However, on June 2, 2009, PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) published a paper on whether the monitor lizard is a bacterium or poisoning when hunting, and has a very clear point of view, from the perspective of the structure of the dragon's skull and the toxicity of oral secretions, the monitor lizard has a special venom sac in the mouth, which secretes a large amount of venom!
Dr Bryan Fry, a venom expert at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said that the venom secreted by the monitor lizard is very similar to snake venom, but it will cause the blood vessels to dilate, and the blood will not coagulate, and the animal will continue to bleed through the wound.
Komodo dragons have several vesic sacs in their mouths that secrete coagulation disorder toxoids, and mass spectrometers show that 35% of the 2,000 transcripts of them encode the known toxin types, molecular complexities and expression levels of other toxins comparable to those recorded in snake venom!
Dr. Brian Frye identified the toxin categories as AVET, cysteine-rich secretory protein (CRISP), kallikrein, natriuretic peptide and type III phospholipase A2 protein, which can cause muscle paralysis, loss of consciousness, shock, and rapid blood loss to death after acting with the animal body.
Of course, this toxin is eaten by the monitor lizard and there is no problem, because venom is a relatively special type of protein, which is decomposed into amino acids by stomach acid and finally absorbed, which will not cause poisoning.
Komodo dragon, how effective is it?
The monitor lizard is probably the largest venomous animal, up to 3 meters long and weighs up to 135 kg, belonging to the genus of monitor lizards in the family Monitor Lizard family, the largest lizard in the world, distributed only in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia, with a total of about 6,000 heads. However, the species was not discovered and documented until 1910.
Komodo dragons eat a huge amount, although they belong to scavengers, but they prefer not to be large animals, on these small islands buffalo, wild boar, deer, monkeys, etc. are their prey, you think, such a large poisonous animal, bite a bite of prey to see Yama, who is not afraid? They are also protected animals, occasionally attacking humans, and by 2012 10 people had died from the venom of the Komodo dragon.
How effective are komodo dragons compared to crocodiles?
They are larger than many crocodiles, such as caimans and Yangtze crocodiles, but much smaller than bay crocodiles and black caimans, so can komodo dragons and crocodiles of similar size be compared?
Nile crocodile attacks wildebeest
The largest bite force of the saltwater crocodile can reach 16414 Newton, more than the spotted hyena 3.5 times, of course, the caiman (spectacled caiman) bite force is far less than that, but this is still much more powerful than the komodo dragon with loose mandibles, their powerful lethality is their inwardly curved teeth, once biting the prey has no chance to escape!
However, the killing of Komodo dragons is not like the death of crocodiles rolling, but at this time in the wound stained with the venom of monitor lizards, and then slowly wait for the prey to die, those who are much larger than the Komodo dragon prey, such as buffalo, etc. are killed in this way, herbivores have an advantage, the general monitor lizards no longer attack, then they can't bear to swallow, just fell into the trap of the monitor lizard!
Therefore, the Komodo dragon is effective for buffalo, wild boar, deer, these herbivores and omnivores, and is ineffective for crocodiles or leopards or top predators of lions, because they will take the initiative to attack, bite the garbage, and the Komodo dragons that are slow to move will eventually be hunted, even if they are poisonous, they will be killed by the prey because they cannot kill the prey on the spot, and at most they will end up with a long time!
But why haven't the Komodo dragon gone extinct? This may be due to the fact that the Indonesian Lesser Sunda Islands have no natural enemies of Komodo dragons at all, and the ancestors of early Komodo dragons were distributed in Australia and the Southeast Asian islands, but there is a reason why only these areas are retained now.
Further reading: Parthenogenesis
In 2005, the Komodo monitor lizard at London Zoo, which has been "living alone", suddenly laid 22 eggs, but 4 hatched normally, and scientists discovered that the animal can still reproduce parthenogenetically!
The sex chromosomes of the Komodo dragon are W and Z, the female combination is WZ, the male is ZZ, and the parthenogenesis of the Komodo dragon will allow a gamete to fertilize instead of sperm in the parthenogenesis of the solitary female reproduction of the Komodo dragon, and the resulting fit is WW and ZZ, but only the ZZ chromosome combination can implant!
Sensitive friends must have found that ZZ is male, female Komodo dragons give birth to male monitor lizards, how to develop in the future I will not talk much, because for species, continuation is more important than ethics!