Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bobobam here. The world thought Komodo dragons were mythological
Speaker 1: until about nineteen eleven. During World War One, a plane
Speaker 1: crashed near Komodo Island and the pilots survived to tell
Speaker 1: the world about the animal. He was very lucky to
Speaker 1: tell the tale. Komodo dragons live up to their fierce reputation.
Speaker 1: They will attack and devour a human being unprovoked, and
Speaker 1: they're part of a group of lizards known as monitors.
Speaker 1: And they're the biggest lizards in the world. The largest
Speaker 1: kimodo ever measured was more than ten feet long that's
Speaker 1: three meters, and weighed three hundred and sixty six pounds
Speaker 1: that's about one hundred and sixty six kilos. To get
Speaker 1: a feel for how powerful this creature is, consider that
Speaker 1: when a kimoto weighing just one hundred and twenty pounds
Speaker 1: or fifty five kilos in the London Zoo needs a
Speaker 1: blood test, it takes two people to hold down its tail.
Speaker 1: Compared to the largest on record, the average kimodo is
Speaker 1: about eighty percent of the length but only two thirds
Speaker 1: of the weight. Many scientists think the record animal may
Speaker 1: have eaten a big meal just before weighing in. A
Speaker 1: kimodo can consume about eighty percent of its body weight
Speaker 1: in just twenty minutes. It can swallow huge pieces at
Speaker 1: a time because its skull and jaw are flexible like
Speaker 1: a Snake's Komodo prey includes chicken, wild boar, deer, goats,
Speaker 1: and animals as big as water buffalo. The komodo is
Speaker 1: the only known lizard that will attack prey bigger than itself,
Speaker 1: and about one tenth of the komodo diet is other
Speaker 1: komodo dragons. There aren't many animals that can survive a
Speaker 1: komodo attack. A human and another kimodo are pretty much
Speaker 1: the only ones. This endangered animal, down to fewer than
Speaker 1: three thousand in the wild, is at the top of
Speaker 1: the food chain in its habitat. Okay, What is it
Speaker 1: that makes this lizard such a good predator? Kamodo dragon's
Speaker 1: adult teeth are highly specialized. They're curved into a shape
Speaker 1: like a comma, with a sharp serrated edge along the
Speaker 1: entire curve of the tooth and extra deep ridges on
Speaker 1: the inner curve that's the cutting edge. The lizards use
Speaker 1: a puncture pull motion to tear into prey. The enamel
Speaker 1: on their teeth is relatively thin, but that serrated edge
Speaker 1: has a serious advantage. It's tipped in an iron infused
Speaker 1: coating that strengthens each tooth and keeps it sharp and
Speaker 1: turns it a little bit of a rusty orange. They
Speaker 1: have some sixty teeth in total, each about half an
Speaker 1: inch or a centimeter long, and like other reptiles and
Speaker 1: therapod dinosaurs for that matter, they continually grow replacement teeth
Speaker 1: in case one breaks or wears down. They have up
Speaker 1: to five replacements for each tooth growing at any given time,
Speaker 1: and will start to grow a new one every forty days.
Speaker 1: That's faster tooth replacement than ever any known reptile or dinosaur.
Speaker 1: The real brilliance in the Kmodo system, though, lies in
Speaker 1: the guarantee of a meal. Their byte strength is a
Speaker 1: bit weak compared with other large reptilian predators, and its
Speaker 1: attack doesn't usually kill its prey out right, But a
Speaker 1: bitten animal will almost always die within a few hours
Speaker 1: or at most a few days. The komodo can wait patiently,
Speaker 1: following it for miles in a leisurely fashion, and then
Speaker 1: locate the dead animal by its smell. Like most lizards
Speaker 1: and snakes, a komodo dragons have a very good sense
Speaker 1: of smell, but it's not the kind of smell most
Speaker 1: of us are familiar with. Like a snake, a kimodo
Speaker 1: smells by collecting air with its forked tongue and then
Speaker 1: depositing that air on scent receptors on the roof of
Speaker 1: its mouth. Using this method, it can detect a dead
Speaker 1: animal up to about five miles away that's eight kilometers.
Speaker 1: Why exactly an animal usually dies after the fact has
Speaker 1: been a object of some debate. Until the past decade
Speaker 1: or so, scientists thought that it was a komodo dragon's
Speaker 1: oral bacteria that killed its prey within days after an attack.
Speaker 1: It's a decent explanation. A bite wounds from all kinds
Speaker 1: of animals, including humans, can transfer bacteria into the bloodstream,
Speaker 1: causing infection, sepsis, and organ shut down throughout the body.
Speaker 1: It was also traditionally thought that most reptiles don't produce venom.
Speaker 1: Venom is a toxin that's secreted by special glands and
Speaker 1: injected into an animal by a bite or sting. We
Speaker 1: knew that lots of snakes are venomous, but only two lizards,
Speaker 1: the Gila monster and the Mexican bearded lizard, were known
Speaker 1: to harry venom, but beginning in the two thousands, research
Speaker 1: has proven otherwise. In two thousand and five, scientists concluded
Speaker 1: the komodo dragons and actually all monitor lizards as well
Speaker 1: as iguanas, produce venom. The researchers started looking specifically for
Speaker 1: venom in komodo because they believed it was unlikely that
Speaker 1: a bacterial infection could kill an animal in as little
Speaker 1: as a day or two. They found venom in komodo saliva.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, further research involving magnetic resonance
Speaker 1: imaging of a preserved Kmodo dragon head discovered a venom
Speaker 1: gland and ducks with openings between those sharp teeth. The
Speaker 1: researchers noted compounds in the venom that induced muscle cramping, hypothermia,
Speaker 1: and low blood pressure, a dangerous combination, especially since the
Speaker 1: venom also contains anticoagulants. Basically, without serious intervention, most animals
Speaker 1: bitten by a komodo will go into shock and bleed out.
Speaker 1: It's not as potent as a cobra venom, which can
Speaker 1: kill in minutes but still undeniably fatal. In the case
Speaker 1: of large animals like water buffalo, for which the amount
Speaker 1: of venom transferred during a couple of bytes might not
Speaker 1: matter much. The komodo dragon's aforementioned mouth bacteria might help
Speaker 1: finish the prey off. The deepness of the bites might
Speaker 1: allow environmental bacteria to enter the wounds. Because kmodo dragons
Speaker 1: don't get sick from the bacteria in their own mouths,
Speaker 1: it's thought the components of their blood might have applications
Speaker 1: in medical research. Back in twenty seventeen, a team of
Speaker 1: researchers found a promising peptide in komodo blood and used
Speaker 1: it as inspiration to create a synthetic peptide that's antibacterial.
Speaker 1: It both weakens bacteria membranes, making them less able to survive,
Speaker 1: and it prevents them from forming up into tough biofilms,
Speaker 1: which could help us fight antibiotic resistant diseases. And compounds
Speaker 1: found in various venoms have been used to create treatments
Speaker 1: for everything from high blood pressure to diabetes. Here's hoping
Speaker 1: that this and other research and komodo dragons fascinating adaptations
Speaker 1: might lead to lots of real world applications. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article Arkmoto Dragon's mouths Deadlier than
Speaker 1: Cobra's venom on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Julia Layton.
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Speaker 1: how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler klang A.
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