Komodo dragons are venomous

According to a paper in the most recent Nature everyone's favourite giant monitor lizard, The Komodo Dragon, is actually venomous. For the longest time people have believed that the adverse effects of being bitten by these lizards was due to "nasty bacteria" in the mouth.

Of course, being crushed between the jaws of a 150 pound lizard tends to have adverse consequences on its own

Apparently the Komodo dragons and monitor lizards share a relatively recent common ancestor with the Gila monster, and also with venomous snakes.

I have not read the paper (yet), but it is discussed in this week's Nature Podcast (highly recommended if you are into the sciences...)

Fortunately, a reasonably fit underwater photographer can, with the incentive of a running Komodo Dragon behind him, move very quickly indeed, and can outpace the Dragon! Never again will I talk a guide in letting me get closer than he his happy with - I realised that running might be an option when the Dragon's head filled the viewfinder as my 80~200 Nikon lens hit the zoom end-stop at 80mm!

Wow, so the Komodo Dragon leaned to make poison. Maby next year they can learn to spit fire....

Sounds interesting, but I could not find the artical, do you know what page it is on?

Fortunately, a reasonably fit underwater photographer can, with the incentive of a running Komodo Dragon behind him, move very quickly indeed, and can outpace the Dragon! Never again will I talk a guide in letting me get closer than he his happy with - I realised that running might be an option when the Dragon's head filled the viewfinder as my 80~200 Nikon lens hit the zoom end-stop at 80mm!

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I don't know dude. A Komodo can hit 20mph in a sprint, I'm not sure I can backpeddle, turn and run faster than that without a wide berth. Steve Irwin almost didn't make it and he had a ranger with a big stick (errr that was in the bloopers cut due to the screaming like a little girl thing). Big thick stick and several people to run past.

I'm surprised Putra Sastraswan and Luis Cruz didn't figure the venom thing yet. They've spent years with the dragon. I should email Putra to check if there's any truth to this or maybe it's a melbourne U messup with the ozzie accent.... mate, that dreeygun beet thruo mah denim... wot it's got venim? B)

Sounds interesting, but I could not find the artical, do you know what page it is on?

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It was discussed in the podcast for the 11/17/05 edition of nature, but I can't see a relevant looking article in the online table of contents for that edition. Odd, as other things discussed in the podcast (Typhoid Mary style "super spreaders", for instance) are in there as original articles. The printed copy should arrive in our library soon, I'll keep an eye out for it.

As long as I can run faster than one other person I feel comfortable.

Just remember that they can also climb sheer cliffs faster than you can & even swim!

I just read more on Brian Fry's discoveries. Apparently, crotamine was discovered in a few lizards like the eastern bearded dragon (Leo Dicaprio watch out!) and even the monitor lizard. I still haven't found his actual study but fragmented reports show he consulted on 3 bite cases involving Komodo.

Wonder if Phil Bronstein's case was also one of them?

I think it was an advanced online publication. The abstract is here

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/...ature04328.html

Interesting but maybe not so surprising. I wonder what else is in their saliva, the Gila monster spit has turned into an interesting therapeutic application.

Bill

I think this would be news to the Komodo National Park people. Komodos are members of Varanidae and so presumably would share the toxin-producing capability of the lace monitor (Varanus varius) mentioned in the abstract. I'll try to pass this on to the San Diego Zoo specialists who have been working on and with these lizards for the past few years in cooperation with The Nature Conservancy and see what they say.

The natural history guide produced by TNC mentions that Komodo dragons may be descended from a larger lizard from Java or Australia, Megalania prisca, which was still wandering around about 30,000 years ago, very recently in evolutionary terms,

Here's a couple of shots of a komodo on a beach, up close and personal. Note the nice rope of (venemous?) saliva too.

Frogfish

the second shot....

We've passed on the Nature article and the question about whether dragons may have venom glands to some komodo dragon experts (Claudio Ciofi at Yale, a guy at the San Diego Zoo, and Tim Jessop in Oz. I'll post if and when we hear anything back from them.

Frogfish