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The largest lizard in the world. Interesting facts about lizards. The Komodo dragon is the largest predator lizard. What does a monitor lizard eat?

The monitor lizard is the largest of all lizards living on earth. They are not inferior in size to crocodiles, although they are not related to them family ties. It is also one of the most ancient animals. Systematically, monitor lizards stand closer to snakes. These reptiles have a separate family, monitor lizards, which includes more than 70 species.

So, what does a monitor lizard look like?

All species of these large lizards have a medium or large body size - about 0.5-1 m. The largest is the Komodo dragon, which is also called the Komodo dragon. Its length is about 3 m, and it weighs 140 kg! Well, you must agree, isn’t it a dragon?

The emerald monitor lizard (Varanus prasinus) is the most bright look. This monitor lizard lives in tropical forests and the green color performs a camouflage function

Large size and well-developed muscles distinguish large monitor lizards from other individuals. They have tenacious and strong paws, the middle part of the abdomen is somewhat expanded, and a long, fleshy, whip-shaped tail. Many monitor lizards have a tail the same length as their body.

Unlike a real lizard, in moments of danger, monitor lizards do not drop their tail, but they whip it perfectly from side to side. The monitor lizard's muzzle is rounded on the nose, but its general features are more suitable to describe a snake than a lizard. True, this lizard has round pupils, while the snake does not.

The reptile's body is covered with large, rounded scales, and each finger has a long, sharp claw. At the very tip of the tongue there is a fork, thanks to which the monitor lizard smells odors that are very far away. The color of monitor lizards is not variegated, with a predominance of gray, sand, black, and brown tones. But some young individuals have a spotted and striped pattern.

Where do monitor lizards live?

Monitor lizards are amateurs warm climate, therefore their habitats are located within tropical zone. The largest species diversity of these lizards is found in Australia and the surrounding islands.

What does a monitor lizard eat?

The monitor lizard is active predator, not too picky about food. They feed on smaller reptiles (even poisonous snakes), young turtles, and insects. A special delicacy for monitor lizards are crocodiles, bird eggs, and snake eggs, so regularly visiting places of possible clutches is like a hobby for them. The reptile can swallow all prey whole, or bite off pieces with its mouth.

Reproduction of monitor lizards

Monitor lizards, like most snakes, lay eggs. The mating season occurs at the beginning of spring. The female lays 15-20 eggs. Since the animal lives in a warm climate, brooding does not occur. However, as well as the responsible upbringing of offspring.

Enemies of monitor lizards in nature

Due to their large size, monitor lizards have not made enemies. Only young individuals are vulnerable, which can even be eaten by their own relatives. As a defense, the lizard hits the attacker with its massive tail, hisses, opens its mouth and bites very painfully.

Rare species

Some species of monitor lizards are listed in the National Red Book, and Komodo dragon recorded in the International Red Book.

September 17th, 2015

In December 1910, the Dutch administration on the island of Java received information from the administrator of the island of Flores (for civil affairs), Stein van Hensbrouck, that there were no people living on the outlying islands of the Lesser Sunda archipelago. known to science giant creatures.

Van Stein's report stated that in the vicinity of Labuan Badi on Flores Island, as well as on nearby Komodo Island, there lives an animal that the local natives call "buaya-darat", which means "earth crocodile".

Of course, you already guessed who we’re talking about now...

Photo 2.

According to local residents, the length of some monsters reaches seven meters, and three- and four-meter buaya-darats are common. Curator of the Butsnzorg Zoological Museum at Botanical Park The province of West Java, Peter Owen, immediately entered into correspondence with the manager of the island and asked him to organize an expedition in order to obtain a reptile unknown to European science.

This was done, although the first lizard caught was only 2 meters 20 centimeters long. Hensbroek sent her skin and photographs to Owens. In the accompanying note, he said that he would try to catch a larger specimen, although this would not be easy, since the natives were terrified of these monsters. Convinced that the giant reptile was not a myth, the zoological museum sent an animal capture specialist to Flores. As a result, the staff of the zoological museum managed to obtain four specimens of “earthen crocodiles,” two of which were almost three meters long.

Photo 3.

In 1912 Peter Owen published in the Bulletin botanical garden an article about the existence of a new species of reptile, naming an animal previously unknown to the spider Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis Ouwens). It later turned out that giant monitor lizards are found not only on Komodo, but also on the small islands of Rytya and Padar, lying to the west of Flores. A careful study of the archives of the Sultanate showed that this animal was mentioned in the archives dating back to 1840.

First World War forced to stop research, and only 12 years later interest in the Komodo dragon resumed. Now the main researchers of the giant reptile are US zoologists. On English language this reptile became known as komodo dragon(comodo dragon). The expedition of Douglas Barden managed to catch a living specimen for the first time in 1926. In addition to two living specimens, Barden also brought 12 stuffed specimens to the United States, three of which are on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Photo 4.

Indonesian National Park Komodo National Park, protected by UNESCO, was founded in 1980 and includes a group of islands with adjacent warm waters and coral reefs with an area of more than 170 thousand hectares.
The islands of Komodo and Rinca are the largest in the reserve. Of course, the main celebrity of the park is the Komodo dragon. However, many tourists come here to see the unique terrestrial and underwater flora and fauna of Komodo. There are about 100 species of fish here. There are about 260 species of reef corals and 70 species of sponges in the sea.
The national park is also home to animals such as the maned sambar, Asian water buffalo, wild boar, and cynomolgus macaque.

Photo 5.

It was Barden who established the true size of these animals and refuted the myth of seven-meter giants. It turned out that males rarely exceed a length of three meters, and females are much smaller, their length is no more than two meters.

Many years of research have made it possible to thoroughly study the habits and lifestyle of giant reptiles. It turned out that Komodo dragons, like other cold-blooded animals, are active only from 6 to 10 am and from 3 to 5 pm. They prefer dry, well-sunny areas, and are usually associated with arid plains, savannas and dry tropical forests.

Photo 6.

In the hot season (May - October) they often stick to dry river beds with jungle-covered banks. Young animals can climb well and spend a lot of time in trees, where they find food, and in addition, they hide from their adult relatives. Giant monitor lizards are cannibals, and adults, on occasion, will not miss the opportunity to feast on their smaller relatives. As shelter from heat and cold, monitor lizards use burrows 1-5 m long, which they dig with strong paws with long, curved and sharp claws. Tree hollows often serve as shelters for young monitor lizards.

Komodo dragons, despite their size and external clumsiness, are good runners. Over short distances, reptiles can reach speeds of up to 20 kilometers, and over long distances their speed is 10 km/h. To reach food at a height (for example, on a tree), monitor lizards can stand on their hind legs, using their tail as a support. Reptiles have good hearing sharp vision, but their most important sense organ is smell. These reptiles are able to smell carrion or blood at a distance of even 11 kilometers.

Photo 7.

Most of the monitor lizard population lives in the western and northern parts of the Flores Islands - about 2000 specimens. On Komodo and Rinca there are approximately 1000 each, and on the smallest islands of the group, Gili Motang and Nusa Koda, there are only 100 individuals.

At the same time, it was noticed that the number of monitor lizards has fallen and individuals are gradually becoming smaller. They say that the decline in the number of wild ungulates on the islands due to poaching is to blame, so monitor lizards are forced to switch to smaller food.

Photo 8.

From modern species Only the Komodo dragon and the crocodile monitor attack prey significantly larger than itself. The crocodile monitor's teeth are very long and almost straight. This is an evolutionary adaptation for successful bird feeding (breaking through dense plumage). They also have serrated edges, and the teeth of the upper and lower jaws can act like scissors, which makes it easier for them to dismember prey in the tree where they spend most life.

Venomous teeth - poisonous lizards. Today there are two known types of them - the gila monster and the escorpion. They live primarily in the southwestern United States and Mexico in rocky foothills, semi-deserts and deserts. Toothworts are most active in the spring, when their favorite food, bird eggs, appears. They also feed on insects, small lizards and snakes. The poison is produced by the submandibular and sublingual salivary glands and flows through the ducts to the teeth of the lower jaw. When biting, the teeth of the poisonous teeth - long and curved back - enter the body of the victim almost half a centimeter.

Photo 9.

The menu of monitor lizards includes a wide variety of animals. They eat practically everything: large insects and their larvae, crabs and storm-washed fish, rodents. And although monitor lizards are born scavengers, they are also active hunters, and often large animals become their prey: wild boars, deer, dogs, domestic and feral goats, and even the largest ungulates of these islands - Asian water buffalos.
Giant monitor lizards do not actively pursue their prey, but more often hide it and grab it when it approaches at close range.

Photo 10.

When hunting large animals, reptiles use very intelligent tactics. Adult monitor lizards, emerging from the forest, slowly move towards grazing animals, stopping from time to time and crouching to the ground if they feel that they are attracting their attention. Wild boars They can knock down deer with a blow of their tail, but more often they use their teeth - delivering a single bite to the animal's leg. This is where success lies. After all, now “ biological weapons» Komodo dragon.

Photo 11.

It has long been believed that the prey is ultimately killed by pathogens found in the monitor lizard's saliva. But in 2009, scientists found that in addition to the “deadly cocktail” of pathogenic bacteria and viruses found in saliva, to which monitor lizards themselves have immunity, reptiles are poisonous.

Research led by Bryan Fry from the University of Queensland (Australia) has shown that in terms of the number and types of bacteria typically found in the mouth of the Komodo dragon, it is not fundamentally different from other carnivores.

Moreover, as Fry states, the Komodo dragon is a very clean animal.

Komodo dragons, which inhabit the islands of Indonesia, are the most large predators on these islands. They hunt pigs, deer and Asian buffalo. 75% of pigs and deer die from the bite of a monitor lizard within 30 minutes from loss of blood, another 15% - after 3-4 hours from the poison secreted by its salivary glands.

A larger animal, a buffalo, when attacked by a monitor lizard, always, despite deep wounds, leaves the predator alive. Following his instinct, the bitten buffalo usually seeks refuge in a warm pond, the water of which is teeming with anaerobic bacteria, and eventually succumbs to infection that penetrates into its legs through the wounds.

Pathogenic bacteria found in the oral cavity of the Komodo dragon in previous studies, according to Fry, are traces of infections entering its body from an infected drinking water. The amount of these bacteria is not enough to cause the death of a buffalo from a bite.

The Komodo dragon has two venom glands in its lower jaw that produce toxic proteins. When these proteins enter the victim’s body, they prevent blood clotting and reduce blood pressure, contribute to muscle paralysis and the development of hypothermia. The whole thing leads the victim to shock or loss of consciousness. The venom gland of Komodo dragons is more primitive than that of poisonous snakes. The gland is located on the lower jaw under the salivary glands, its ducts open at the base of the teeth, and do not exit through special channels in the poisonous teeth, like in snakes.

Photo 12.

In the oral cavity, poison and saliva mix with decaying food debris, forming a mixture in which many different deadly bacteria multiply. But this is not what surprised scientists, but the poison delivery system. It turned out to be the most complex of all similar systems in reptiles. Instead of injecting it with one blow with its teeth, like poisonous snakes, monitor lizards have to literally rub it into the wound of the victim, making jerks with their jaws. This evolutionary invention has helped giant monitor lizards survive for thousands of years.

Photo 14.

After a successful attack, time begins to work for the reptile, and the hunter is left to follow the heels of the victim all the time. The wound does not heal, the animal becomes weaker every day. After two weeks, even such a large animal as a buffalo has no strength left, its legs give way and it falls. It's time for a feast for the monitor lizard. He slowly approaches the victim and rushes at him. His relatives come running to the smell of blood. In feeding areas, fights often occur between males of equal value. As a rule, they are cruel, but not deadly, as evidenced by the numerous scars on their bodies.

For humans, a huge head covered like a shell, with unkind, unblinking eyes, a toothy gaping mouth, from which protrudes a forked tongue, constantly in motion, a lumpy and folded body of a dark brown color on strong splayed paws with long claws and a massive tail. is the living embodiment of the image of extinct monsters of distant eras. One can only be amazed how such creatures could survive today practically unchanged.

Photo 15.

Paleontologists believe that 5-10 million years ago, the ancestors of the Komodo dragon appeared in Australia. This assumption fits well with the fact that the only known representative of large reptiles is Megalania prisca measuring from 5 to 7 m and weighing 650-700 kg was found on this continent. Megalania, and the full name of the monstrous reptile can be translated from Latin language, as a “great ancient vagabond,” preferred, like the Komodo dragon, to settle in grassy savannas and sparse forests, where he hunted mammals, including very large ones, such as diprodonts, various reptiles and birds. These were the largest poisonous creatures that ever existed on Earth.

Fortunately, these animals became extinct, but their place was taken by the Komodo dragon, and now it is these reptiles that attract thousands of people to come to the islands forgotten by time to see the last representatives of the ancient world in natural conditions.

Photo 16.

Indonesia has 17,504 islands, although these numbers are not definitive. The Indonesian government has set itself the difficult task of conducting a complete audit of all Indonesian islands without exception. And who knows, maybe after its completion there will still be open known to people animals, although not as dangerous as Komodo dragons, but certainly no less amazing!

The Komodo dragon is one of the largest lizards in the world, belonging to the Varanova family, the Scaly order. In terms of size, it is comparable only to crocodiles, although it has no relationship with them. They live naturally on the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rinca, and Flores. Locals call this reptile the “Komodo Dragon”, “Land Crocodile”. According to research data, it historical homeland Australia is considered. Gradually he migrated to neighboring islands.

Monitor lizard: description, characteristics

There is no reliable information about the origin of the Komodo dragon. Only it was classified as an animal fossil. The approximate time when dragons appeared on Earth is 5–10 million years ago. This is due to the fact that paleontologists The remains of the first representative of this species were found in the ancient layers of the Australian Peninsula. It is unclear how he managed to move to another territory.

Appearance of a Komodo dragon

The size of these predatory reptiles is truly impressive. A wild Komodo dragon as an adult weighs about 75–90 kg at medium length 2.5–2.6 m. Males are much larger than females. According to statistical data Weight Limit females - 68–70 kg, with a length of 2.3 m. In an artificial habitat, the animal can reach more impressive dimensions. One such example is the pet of the zoo in St. Louis: weighing 166 kg, with a body length of 3.14 m.

Today the population large monitor lizards is declining, which is associated with degradation. And the reason for this is the poor nutritional diet in their natural habitats and mass poaching.

They have a squat, dense build with muscular limbs. The location on the sides and long claws contribute to convenient hunting and fast movement. These paws are also convenient for digging deep holes. Have big tail, often comparable in size to the body. Unlike lizards, they do not throw it off when in danger, but begin to hit it to the sides. The head is flat, on a short massive neck. Looking at it from the front or in profile, associations with a snake appear.

The skin consists of two layers: scaly- basic, with the overlay of small ossified growths. Young representatives are more bright color. Orange-yellowish spotting is observed along the entire outer length, ending with stripes on the neck and tail. In a mature state, the skin is transformed, repainted in a gray-brown color with small yellow speckles.

The teeth are like peaks, sharp and long, one side attached to the jaw bones. This is an ideal device for tearing prey apart. The tongue is very long, sinuous, with a fork at the end.

Where does the monitor lizard live and behavior in the wild?

Today, populations of monitor lizards are inhabited in five Indonesian regions. islands: Komodo, Gili Motang, Rindja, Padan and Flores. Selects land that is well heated sun rays: savannas, plains, tropical forested areas. On hot days it moves closer to the water, with shady thickets.

The Komodo dragon is not used to grouping with its fellows and leads a separate life. They group only during the mating season or in search of food. Even then, they are constantly in compromise. They are active only during the daytime, and at night they sleep soundly in shelters, although there are exceptions to the rule.

Row features monitor lizards:

The bite of a monitor lizard can become tragic. This is caused by the presence in saliva of a large accumulation of diaphoretic bacteria that cause blood poisoning. It is believed that this is due to eating carrion. Recently, poisonous glands were discovered in the animal’s mouth. If they enter the human bloodstream, they can cause: dizziness, loss of consciousness, muscle paralysis.

In captivity, monitor lizards live much shorter, no more than 25 years. But in the wild areola - 35–60 years.

Lizard nutrition

Varan is the king and god in his domain, as he is able to cope with all large game. He does not give in to a gecko or a boa constrictor, but is not averse to feasting on small representatives. There are frequent cases of attacks by him: on horses, cows, buffaloes, deer, sheep. There were eyewitnesses who claimed that the predator easily coped with a mammal weighing 1200 kg. First, it bites through the tendons, immobilizing the victim, and then gradually begins to eat.

During dry periods he fasts, but during rainy periods he eats everything. This species has signs of cannibalism. This is especially evident when shortage food. Large individuals eat small fellows. He does not even disdain the remains washed ashore.

How does it reproduce

The mating season for monitor lizards begins in winter, during the dry period. Since the number of males predominates, there is a competitive struggle for each female. The fighters walk like a wall at each other, standing on their hind legs. They make a grab with their front ones. The strongest throws the opponent onto his back and begins to scratch him intensely. The defeated one has to retreat in disgrace. And the winner leaves with the female to mate.

These are quite passionate lovers who, at the moment of intimacy, begin to rub their partner’s head and scratch their back and tail. He must be on top. This is how he shows his superiority. After fertilized The lizard leaves to look for a place to lay eggs. Usually these are weed nests, leaves, compost heaps. Having dug a deep hole, it lays up to 20–25 eggs there, each weighing up to 200 g. After 8 months, the babies hatch. And all this time the mother serves reliable protection. To avoid eating their young, lizards climb to the top of the tree. There they stay for the first 2 years, until the monitor lizards grow up.

In addition to sexual fertilization, they are characterized by parthenogenesis. Postponed unfertilized eggs from which only males hatch.

Predators do not pose a potential danger to an adult. However, there have been recorded cases of attacks by lizards when, due to some signs, they were confused with prey. Let's introduce some notable precedents, taking place:

The bite of a Komodo dragon is not only painful and traumatic, but also causes toxic defeat blood. Without timely medical care it leads to death.
During dry and hungry seasons, lizards become more aggressive. They are not afraid to approach human habitation; they are attracted by the smell food waste. In this state they can attack small children. Even local burials become a source of food for them. Therefore, the inhabitants of the islands began to cover the dead with stone slabs.
There have been cases when giants attacked groups of tourists. With their keen sense of smell, they could smell blood from a great distance.
In moments of danger, they can empty the esophagus with lightning speed. This gives them mobility.

Due to the fact that these predatory reptiles are under protection, killing them is prohibited. To get rid of aggressors, specially trained huntsmen conduct individual catches. Then the lizards are resettled in other, sparsely populated regions of the islands.

September 17th, 2015

In December 1910, the Dutch administration on the island of Java received information from the governor of the island of Flores (for civil affairs), Stein van Hensbrouck, that giant creatures unknown to science lived on the outlying islands of the Lesser Sunda archipelago.

Of course, you already guessed who we’re talking about now...

According to local residents, some monsters reach seven meters in length, and three- and four-meter buaya darats are common. The curator of the Butsnzorg Zoological Museum at the Botanical Park of West Java Province, Peter Owen, immediately entered into correspondence with the manager of the island and asked him to organize an expedition in order to obtain a reptile unknown to European science.

In 1912, Peter Owen published an article in the Bulletin of the Botanical Garden about the existence of a new species of reptile, naming the previously unknown animal the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis Ouwens). It later turned out that giant monitor lizards are found not only on Komodo, but also on the small islands of Rytya and Padar, lying to the west of Flores. A careful study of the archives of the Sultanate showed that this animal was mentioned in the archives dating back to 1840.

The First World War forced a halt to research, and only 12 years later did interest in the Komodo dragon resume. Now the main researchers of the giant reptile are US zoologists. In English, this reptile became known as the Komodo dragon. The expedition of Douglas Barden managed to catch a living specimen for the first time in 1926. In addition to two living specimens, Barden also brought 12 stuffed specimens to the United States, three of which are on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Indonesian Komodo National Park, protected by UNESCO, was founded in 1980 and includes a group of islands with adjacent warm waters and coral reefs covering an area of more than 170 thousand hectares.
The islands of Komodo and Rinca are the largest in the reserve. Of course, the main celebrity of the park is the Komodo dragon. However, many tourists come here to see the unique terrestrial and underwater flora and fauna of Komodo. There are about 100 species of fish here. There are about 260 species of reef corals and 70 species of sponges in the sea.
The national park is also home to animals such as the maned sambar, Asian water buffalo, wild boar, and cynomolgus macaque.

Komodo dragons, despite their size and external clumsiness, are good runners. Over short distances, reptiles can reach speeds of up to 20 kilometers, and over long distances their speed is 10 km/h. To reach food at a height (for example, on a tree), monitor lizards can stand on their hind legs, using their tail as a support. Reptiles have good hearing and sharp eyesight, but their most important sense organ is smell. These reptiles are able to smell carrion or blood at a distance of even 11 kilometers.

Of the modern species, only the Komodo dragon and the crocodile monitor attack prey significantly larger than themselves. The crocodile monitor's teeth are very long and almost straight. This is an evolutionary adaptation for successful bird feeding (breaking through dense plumage). They also have serrated edges, and the teeth of the upper and lower jaws can act like scissors, making it easier for them to dismember prey in the tree where they spend most of their lives.

Venomtooths are poisonous lizards. Today there are two known types of them - the gila monster and the escorpion. They live primarily in the southwestern United States and Mexico in rocky foothills, semi-deserts and deserts. Toothworts are most active in the spring, when their favorite food—bird eggs—appears. They also feed on insects, small lizards and snakes. The poison is produced by the submandibular and sublingual salivary glands and travels through the ducts to the teeth of the lower jaw. When biting, the teeth of the poisonous teeth - long and curved back - enter the body of the victim almost half a centimeter.

When hunting large animals, reptiles use very intelligent tactics. Adult monitor lizards, emerging from the forest, slowly move towards grazing animals, stopping from time to time and crouching to the ground if they feel that they are attracting their attention. They can knock down wild boars and deer with a blow of their tail, but more often they use their teeth - inflicting a single bite on the animal’s leg. This is where success lies. After all, now the “biological weapon” of the Komodo dragon has been launched.

Moreover, as Fry states, the Komodo dragon is a very clean animal.

Komodo dragons, which inhabit the islands of Indonesia, are the largest predators on these islands. They hunt pigs, deer and Asian buffalo. 75% of pigs and deer die from the bite of a monitor lizard within 30 minutes from loss of blood, another 15% - after 3-4 hours from the poison secreted by its salivary glands.

Pathogenic bacteria found in the oral cavity of the Komodo dragon in previous studies, according to Fry, are traces of infections entering its body from contaminated drinking water. The amount of these bacteria is not enough to cause the death of a buffalo from a bite.

The Komodo dragon has two venom glands in its lower jaw that produce toxic proteins. When these proteins enter the victim's body, they prevent blood clotting, lower blood pressure, promote muscle paralysis and the development of hypothermia. The whole thing leads the victim to shock or loss of consciousness. The venom gland of Komodo dragons is more primitive than that of poisonous snakes. The gland is located on the lower jaw under the salivary glands, its ducts open at the base of the teeth, and do not exit through special channels in the poisonous teeth, like in snakes.

Paleontologists believe that 5-10 million years ago, the ancestors of the Komodo dragon appeared in Australia. This assumption fits well with the fact that the only known representative of large reptiles - Megalania prisca, measuring from 5 to 7 m and weighing 650-700 kg, was found on this continent. Megalania, and the full name of the monstrous reptile can be translated from Latin as “great ancient tramp”, preferred, like the Komodo dragon, to settle in grassy savannas and sparse forests, where he hunted mammals, including very large ones, such as diprodonts, various reptiles and birds. These were the largest poisonous creatures that ever existed on Earth.

Indonesia has 17,504 islands, although these numbers are not definitive. The Indonesian government has set itself the difficult task of conducting a complete audit of all Indonesian islands without exception. And who knows, maybe at the end of it, animals unknown to people will still be discovered, perhaps not as dangerous as Komodo dragons, but certainly no less amazing!

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Komodo dragon also called the giant Indonesian monitor lizard because it is the most big lizard on the ground. Its size is impressive, because often such a lizard can grow more than 3 meters in length and weigh over 80 kg.

Komodo dragon
Interestingly, in captivity monitor lizards reach large sizes than in wildlife. For example, in the St. Louis Zoo there lived one such representative, whose weight was 166 kg and its length was 313 cm.

Many scientists believe that in Australia (and monitor lizards originated there) animals tend to have gigantic sizes. In addition, Megalania, a relative of monitor lizards that has already become extinct, was much larger. It reached a length of 7 meters and weighed about 700 kg.

But different scientists different opinions, but what remains obvious is that the Komodo dragon has an impressive size, and this does not please all of its neighbors, because it is also a predator.

True, due to the fact that large ungulates are increasingly being exterminated by poachers, the monitor lizard has to look for smaller prey, and this has a depressing effect on its size.

Already, the average representative of these animals has a length and weight much less than that of its relatives just 10 years ago. The habitat of these reptiles is not too wide; they have chosen the islands of Indonesia.

About 1,700 individuals live on Komodo, about 2,000 monitor lizards live on Flores Island, Rinca Island shelters 1,300 individuals and 100 monitor lizards live on Gili Motang. Such precision speaks volumes about how rare this amazing animal has become.

The character and lifestyle of the Komodo dragon

Komodo dragon does not respect the company of his relatives too much; he prefers a solitary lifestyle. True, there are times when such loneliness is broken. Basically, this happens during the breeding season or during feeding, then these animals can gather in groups.

It happens that there is a large dead carcass, from which the smell of carrion emanates. And monitor lizards have an overdeveloped sense of smell. And a rather impressive group of these lizards gathers on this carcass. But most often, monitor lizards hunt alone, usually during the day, and hide in shelters at night. They build burrows for shelter.

Such a hole can be up to 5 meters long; monitor lizards tear it out with their claws. And young people can easily hide in a hollow tree. But the animal does not strictly adhere to these rules.

He can even walk through his territory at night in search of prey. He doesn’t like active heat too much, so he prefers to be in the shade at this time. The Komodo dragon feels most comfortable on dry terrain, especially if it is a small hill that is clearly visible.

During hot periods, it prefers to wander near rivers, looking for carrion that has washed ashore. He also gets into the water easily, because he is an excellent swimmer. It will not be difficult for him to cover quite a considerable distance on the water.

But don’t think that this bulky one can only be agile in the water. On land, when chasing prey, this clumsy beast can reach speeds of up to 20 km/h.

Very interesting watch Komodo dragon on video- there are videos where you can see how he gets food from a tree - he stands on his hind legs, and uses his strong tail as a reliable support.

Adult and heavy individuals do not like to climb trees too much, and they are not very good at it, but young monitor lizards, not burdened with heavy weight, climb trees very well. And they even really like to spend time on curved trunks and branches. Such a powerful, dexterous and big beast There are no enemies in nature.

True, the monitor lizards themselves are not averse to dining on their weaker relatives. Especially during periods when food is tight, monitor lizards easily attack their smaller brothers, grab them and shake them violently, breaking their spines. Large victims (,), sometimes fight very desperately for their lives, causing serious injuries to the monitor lizards.

And since this one prefers big catch, then you can count more than one scar on the body of adult monitor lizards. But animals achieve such invulnerability only in adulthood. And small monitor lizards can be prey for dogs, snakes, birds and other predators.

Komodo dragon nutrition

The diet of the monitor lizard is varied. While the lizard is still in infancy, it can even eat insects. But as the individual grows, its prey increases in weight. Until the monitor lizard reaches a weight of 10 kg, it feeds on small animals, sometimes climbing to the tops of trees after them.

True, such “babies” can easily attack game that weighs almost 50 kg. But after the monitor lizard has gained weight more than 20 kg, its diet consists only of large animals. The monitor lizard waits for deer and wild boars at a watering hole or near forest paths. Seeing prey, the predator pounces, trying to knock down the victim with a blow of its tail.

Often, such a blow immediately breaks the legs of the unfortunate. But more often, the monitor lizard tries to bite the tendons on the victim’s legs. And even then, when the immobilized victim cannot escape, he tears the still living animal into large pieces, tearing them out of the neck or stomach. The monitor lizard eats a not particularly large animal entirely (for example, a goat). If the victim does not immediately surrender, the monitor lizard will still overtake him, guided by the smell of blood.

Varan is gluttonous. In one meal, he easily eats about 60 kg of meat, if he himself weighs 80. According to eyewitnesses, one is not too big female Komodo dragon(weighing 42 kg) in 17 minutes finished off a boar weighing 30 kg.

It is clear that it is better to stay away from such a cruel, insatiable predator. Therefore, from the areas where monitor lizards settle, for example, reticulated pythons, which simply cannot compare in hunting qualities with this animal, disappear.

Reproduction and life expectancy of the Komodo dragon

Monitor lizards become sexually mature only in the 10th year of life. In addition, only a little more than 20% of all monitor lizards are females, so the struggle for them is serious. Only the strongest and healthiest individuals come to mate.

After mating, the female finds a place to lay eggs; she is especially attracted to compost heaps, which are a natural incubator for eggs. Up to 20 eggs are laid there.

After 8 - 8.5 months, the cubs appear, which immediately move from the nest to tree branches to be away from dangerous relatives. There they spend the first 2 years of their life.

Interestingly, a female can lay eggs without a male. The body of these lizards is designed in such a way that even with non-sexual reproduction, the eggs will be viable and normal young will hatch from them. Only they will all be male.

So nature took care of the case when monitor lizards find themselves on islands isolated from each other, where one female may not have any relatives. How many years Komodo dragons live in the wild, it was not possible to know for sure, it is believed that 50-60 years. Moreover, females live half as long. And in captivity, not a single monitor lizard has ever lived more than 25 years.