In addition to have saliva that is a biological weapon, the komodo dragon is also venomous. Mind you this news came out in 2008 in an articale I read by Dr. Bryan Fry, but here's a link from BBC. BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Komodo dragons have venomous bite These lizards are my favorite animal!
I've been to the island of Komodo, and saw the dragons in the wild. They are scary motherfuckers. They bite their prey, and wait days... even weeks... for it to die.
Yea, I was watchin somethin a while back and it showed a komodo drag biting a water buffalo or some shit like that and it just sat there and waited as it died. So brutal to be able to kill something that big by just biting it and chillin
Yeah i wouldn't want to face an agonizing death at the face of a couple komodos. THey'd make one badass guard dog haha
Yea komodo dragons are badass i remember seeing them on Life killing a water buffalo.... [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDWSmQsvRSE"]YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.[/ame]
I was there earlier this year and saw 5 or 6 dragons. They seem so much bigger and scarier in person then you can even imagine. Blood and drool just dripped from their mouths! At one point on the trail we saw a deer with a dragon about 10 feet away, just patiently waiting. It was pretty intense! I have a better picture which really shows the blood, but I can't find it on my computer at the moment.... Here is what the island looks like (actually, this might be looking towards Rinca island, but it's all part of Komodo National Park)
I work for a travel company as a tour leader and photography instructor (among other things)... I was working on a month-long cruise in South East Asia and Komodo was one of the stops.
I can honestly say I'm jealous! Maybe when I get my bachelors I'll be able to go there and do some conservation work.
if a komodo even decides to attack you, fuck venom. That'd be the good way to go. These guys will just rip our shit
Well well well, I ALWAYS thought it was purely the disgusting bacteria that they have in their mouths that causes death by slow, painful infection, but that link does indeed seem to prove that notion wrong- especially since they have a venom gland, that basically makes it positive that they do contain venom, or at least once did and now have a vestigial venom gland. I do, personally, have a little bit of trouble swallowing that a 'venom' can take weeks to kill the prey... is there any other example that anybody here knows about of a different creature making such a venom that takes so long to act? I mean, it's probably because the deer, wilderbeast and whatnot are so huge that it takes a while for the venom to wear them down, or that the venom is very weak, or both. Also, I was always under the impression that Dragons were of the same lineage as monitors (water monitors, perenties etc) - the gait is the same, they look very similar etc... while gila monsters don't look much like them at all. I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe they, in their haste, have mistaken covergent evolution for common ancestry? Poisonous shrews are certainly not of the same ancestry as snakes and gila monsters, but none-the-less contain a venom (granted, neurotoxin and not anti-coagulent, I think anyhow...), have a venom gland (modified from a salival gland methinks) and have teeth that are solid and not hollow (like a Komodo Dragon), but we certainly wouldn't say that they are of the same lineage. Gila monsters look more like skinks or something, almost like the bobtails we have here in Australia - certainly nothing like a Komodo Dragon. Their habits too are nothing alike. Also, the geographical isolation means that whatever split in their ancestries must have happened a LONG time ago... surely too long ago for us to say, in a meaningful way, that Komodos are of the same ancestry as gila monsters. What do other blades think about this?
I understand your point, and I'm not sure if this will answer your question but from what I understand the venom of the komodo dragon doesn't kill it's prey directly, it prevents the blood from clotting, that way if the lizard seriously injures and animal, and it is bleeding, it will die faster, therefor bi-passing the whole need to wait for septicemia to set in.
Indeed, I got that from the article! It's a pretty ineffective venom, but I guess they're cold blooded and have a far smaller energy requirement than us mammals with our homestasis and whatnot... The big question, methinks, was how correct they were in putting Komodos as part of a similar lineage with Gila Monsters. In my humble, unqualified opinion, it sounds like they've hastily mistaken covergent evolution for common ancestry or otherwise assumed that they're closely related purely based upon the fact that they're both venomous.
If I'm correct this new venom "family" that Dr.Fry is creating is theoretical. Obviously Gila Monsters and Komodos are morphologically different enough to be classified as such. I'm not too sure about this new venom group either.