Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, this is Alison I don't know,
Speaker 1: like the science and how stuff works dot com. And
Speaker 1: this is Robert Lamb, science writer at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. So, Alison, you've got a dog, right, do
Speaker 1: you have a dog? Yeah? I have. I have a
Speaker 1: cat myself, And I think one thing that these two
Speaker 1: species sharing and in common is the ability to vomit,
Speaker 1: like on a daily basis, And not now the the ability,
Speaker 1: but just the willingness and sheer desire to vomit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does seem like I spent a lot of my
Speaker 1: life these days cleaning up accidents, either of the pet
Speaker 1: or children variety. The thing that gets to me about
Speaker 1: the cat is that she will only vomit on things
Speaker 1: like carpet or like we have hardwoods and then we
Speaker 1: have like some areas of carpet, and like she will
Speaker 1: you'll hear like vomiting. I would be in the night
Speaker 1: and I'll hear of her warming up to the vomit,
Speaker 1: and I'll and I'll wake up. I could be in
Speaker 1: like a deep dream state and I'll wake up and
Speaker 1: I'll be all right. She's in the house, she's about
Speaker 1: to vomit. So I go and find her, and she'll
Speaker 1: be on this little rug right about the up shut
Speaker 1: And I take her off, and I set her on
Speaker 1: the hardwoods, because at least she vomits on the hard woods.
Speaker 1: Clean up, easy to clean up. Set her on the hardwood,
Speaker 1: and she scampers over to another carpet, like she can
Speaker 1: only throw up on a carpet. It is true, they
Speaker 1: do display a remarkable propensity for display for for puking
Speaker 1: on carpet. Why is that there are dogs the same way? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are. They love to to throw up on a carpet.
Speaker 1: But the point of this barthring anecdote is that mixed
Speaker 1: both of us pretty glad that we don't have Commodo dragons,
Speaker 1: because you know, cat throp dog throp is nothing compared
Speaker 1: to what you might see, uh, come out of a
Speaker 1: Komodo dragon after it eights a a goat. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: if you're wondering how this looks like, do a YouTube
Speaker 1: search for Komodo dragon and vomit and you'll get to
Speaker 1: see a lovely video set to some really really interesting
Speaker 1: musical choice vomiting up a part fully digested goat leg. So,
Speaker 1: now that we've thoroughly upset your stomach. Let's tell you
Speaker 1: why we're talking about Commodo dragons. Robert and I over
Speaker 1: at has to First dot Com have been immersed in
Speaker 1: um writing content for this upcoming really neat series that's
Speaker 1: going to premiere on the Discovery Channel called Life. You
Speaker 1: watch Planet Earth and this is this is the same
Speaker 1: bunch of people, the same just completely addictive thing, beautiful
Speaker 1: footage of just some of the amazing tidbits from our
Speaker 1: natural world. Right it's a planet Earth was habitat focused,
Speaker 1: and Life will be focused on the amazing species populating
Speaker 1: our planet and their remarkable behaviors. And in one of
Speaker 1: the episodes on reptiles and amphibians, the komodo dragon is
Speaker 1: prominently featured. Yeah, and Robert and I were very very
Speaker 1: impressed by the Commodo dragons because you see them in
Speaker 1: the zoo and you know they're not doing much. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're fed of frozen rat or something. They're kind of lethargic,
Speaker 1: as they tend to be cold blooded. They're not exerting
Speaker 1: any more energy than they need to. And let me
Speaker 1: point out, at least they have the excuse of being
Speaker 1: cold blooded. On like the panda which just sits there,
Speaker 1: warm blooded, not doing anything and gets all the attention.
Speaker 1: That's a separate tangent. But anyway, so we really wanted
Speaker 1: to do a podcast on those crazy Komodos that we've
Speaker 1: been writing about. And just for those of you're interested,
Speaker 1: the series is going to premiere in March. Unless you
Speaker 1: know of your British you've already seen it. So let's
Speaker 1: give you a greick introduction to the Komodo dragon. The
Speaker 1: komodo is about nine feet long. It lives over on
Speaker 1: unlimited range of islands in Indonesia, one of which is
Speaker 1: Komodo Island, and it's the most intelligent and the largest
Speaker 1: lizard in the world. Yeah, and this, uh, this is
Speaker 1: a top predator we're talking about here. The only thing
Speaker 1: that eats Komodo dragons, it's other commodo dragons. I mean,
Speaker 1: unless you're going into some pretty strange restaurants, you're not
Speaker 1: going to find it on the menu. Um. And when
Speaker 1: I say they eat other Komodo dragons, like like a
Speaker 1: lot of species, they'll eat their their own if they
Speaker 1: happen to be wounded or weak or dead. Uh, the
Speaker 1: Komodo dragon is really big commodo dragon will eat fresh food,
Speaker 1: it'll it'll kill something an idiot. But if it's something's
Speaker 1: been setting around on it's a little rotten, you know.
Speaker 1: The commodo dragons not gonna I'm not gonna pass that up.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it'll eat up. It'll eat one of its
Speaker 1: its own of its rotting on the side of the path.
Speaker 1: But they're also quite fond of their own young. A
Speaker 1: female kommoto dragon will lay the eggs in a burrow
Speaker 1: and then just leave them. Komodos dragons have no further
Speaker 1: role in the raising of the young, so it's not
Speaker 1: practicing touchment parenting right now. If there's definitely mammal they
Speaker 1: want to practice like ingestion parenting because if they find
Speaker 1: any of the smaller like a hatchling komotos, they will
Speaker 1: eat them up. So well, how does the hatchling prevent this? Well,
Speaker 1: they have to two methods. One method is to pretty
Speaker 1: much live in the trees, and the kimotos can climb
Speaker 1: trees when they really want to, but these guys will
Speaker 1: stay up in the higher branches and just stay out
Speaker 1: of side. The other tactic is of course to roll
Speaker 1: themselves in fecal matter, because it's like the Kommoto dragon
Speaker 1: will eat just about anything, but it's not that big
Speaker 1: on eating things that are that are you know, covered
Speaker 1: in app More on that later. Um, it's a great podcast.
Speaker 1: You get your vomit and your crab content on one.
Speaker 1: So yeah, in terms of other things they'll eat, though,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll take down at um, things like like deer,
Speaker 1: they'll take down you know, rats or whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: smaller animals. But then they'll even take down water buffalo occasionally.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna get more into the hunting technique bees
Speaker 1: in a minute, because it just just like takes weeks
Speaker 1: while they wait for the thing to die, and then
Speaker 1: when it's time to eat it, they just throw themselves
Speaker 1: at it, the big ones. Anyway, you end up having
Speaker 1: this kind of like circle of feeding with the komodos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's communal, but it's not really generous per se. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not like a Thanksgiving dinner or not
Speaker 1: like my Thanksgiving dinners. Some families probably do it differently.
Speaker 1: It would be like if your Thanksgiving dinner consists of
Speaker 1: like your three largest uncles rolling around in a carcass
Speaker 1: and throwing elbows and then like the smaller members of
Speaker 1: the family are on the grandma oscar. Yeah, Grandma's an outscars,
Speaker 1: just trying to like reach in and grasp a chicken leg.
Speaker 1: And then all the little kids are just out in
Speaker 1: the bushes hoping that there are other family members. Don't
Speaker 1: eat them while they're waiting for scraps. That's pretty much
Speaker 1: what you have. And they will eat pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: These guys clean their plates. Researchers have observed them eating
Speaker 1: uppers of eight percent of their own body weight. Like
Speaker 1: when they're through, they're just completely like dragging gut back
Speaker 1: to their burrows there. It's just amazing. These guys have recliners.
Speaker 1: Would be billing up for hours in front of the the
Speaker 1: TV after Yeah, and and it's in the things they
Speaker 1: can't necessarily digest everything. They can digest a lot, but
Speaker 1: like say they eat some hide, some bone, some antlers
Speaker 1: or something, they can't digest that. So a little later
Speaker 1: they just vomited all up. And this uh, just disgusting
Speaker 1: smelling ball known as a gastric pellet. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't really look like a pellet. It more looks like
Speaker 1: a like a basketball made of half digested goat. There
Speaker 1: are some animals out there that aren't big on eating
Speaker 1: the actual guts of an animal. Um. The komodo will.
Speaker 1: But like we said earlier, that the little ones roll
Speaker 1: around in the crap so that they won't get eaten.
Speaker 1: So the komodo before it will eat the intestines, it
Speaker 1: will take them in its mouth and sling them around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that all the fecal matter goes flying out into
Speaker 1: the forest. And then once it's nice and clean, they'll
Speaker 1: they'll eat the guts as well. They'll partake of the intestineous.
Speaker 1: They are ravenous and vile creatures, but we still love
Speaker 1: them amazingly cool too. So let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: their hunting techniques. I mean, how would a komodo dragon
Speaker 1: take down a water buffalo? So a live one, because
Speaker 1: like we said, they'll eat the dead one, but a
Speaker 1: live water buffalo is a different proposition. Well, part of
Speaker 1: it is ambush. I mean really, all they need to
Speaker 1: do is they need to sit around and wait for
Speaker 1: some great ambling beasts to come by, and they need
Speaker 1: to land one good bye. And why do they need
Speaker 1: to land one good bite? Well because they have venom
Speaker 1: and their mouths are really just this crazy cottail of
Speaker 1: bacteria and venom. So even if the bite doesn't kill
Speaker 1: the animal instantly, the venom and the bacteria will do
Speaker 1: their work and the animal, no matter how big, will
Speaker 1: likely die. I think it takes a goat sized animal
Speaker 1: about four days. Um. The buffalo took took much longer
Speaker 1: than that. But again, you can watch this in life.
Speaker 1: It's really an amazing scene. It's a mouthful of just
Speaker 1: serrated peece too, so it's a pretty nasty bite anyway,
Speaker 1: even if it's like a mouthful steak knives or something
Speaker 1: dirty nasty snake knives. Yeah, And some of the toxins
Speaker 1: in there, one of them causes intestinal cramps and it
Speaker 1: makes the animal, the prey, more sensitive to pain. And
Speaker 1: then you have another toxin in there that causes hypothermia.
Speaker 1: And then of course, as if that weren't enough, um,
Speaker 1: other toxins will make the animal just bleed like crazy,
Speaker 1: and from the outside like the prey looks stunned and
Speaker 1: which is kind of quiet. Yeah. One of the interesting
Speaker 1: things about the like the water buffalo that they study
Speaker 1: in life is that they actually observed the wound healing up,
Speaker 1: but the but the venom was doing its work inside
Speaker 1: the animal. So so beside the venom, we have stuff
Speaker 1: like the tongue. Um. So if you're not hanging out
Speaker 1: at a watering hole with a great big water buffle,
Speaker 1: you have to find your prey right well, the tongue
Speaker 1: is actually the komotives smelling mechanism, So kind of get
Speaker 1: in your head this picture of a lizard flicking its
Speaker 1: tongue out. So what it's doing with its tongue is
Speaker 1: it's flicking out and it's catching air molecules and then
Speaker 1: it's scraping them on the inside of its mouth and
Speaker 1: it's analyzing them essentially, and the fork tongue is giving
Speaker 1: you directions for example, like if the tongue's left fork
Speaker 1: has more scent molecules, then the dragon knows you're hiding
Speaker 1: on the left, and so it's just constantly flicking its
Speaker 1: tongue back and forth to follow its prey. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like smells in three D. Yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a funky tongue. And then of course we have the teeth.
Speaker 1: You know, once you once you get in close to
Speaker 1: the to the prey, if then you can land that bite.
Speaker 1: But their their teeth are and jaws are really not
Speaker 1: that impressive. I mean, they have the steak news and everything,
Speaker 1: but the bite itself is I think similar to a
Speaker 1: cat's strength. It's it's not very it's not very strong.
Speaker 1: What really is the secret weapon is the vatam. So
Speaker 1: once the Commodo dragon eats its prey and I mean
Speaker 1: eating kind of loosely because it doesn't choose before swallowing,
Speaker 1: it just kind of ingest cole like a snake, it
Speaker 1: can unhinge its jaws and it can open them to
Speaker 1: swallow these just like ginormous chunks of meat that are
Speaker 1: larger than their heads. Yeah, it's like Poko to Chow
Speaker 1: or any of those big steak chains, you know, right, So,
Speaker 1: can you picture yourself going to one of these, like
Speaker 1: Brazilian meat places and unhinging your jaw because, like, you know,
Speaker 1: imbibing whole this giant steak. Yeah, that's kind of what
Speaker 1: the commoted is. Generally one table of Commodo dragons, and
Speaker 1: most major steak restaurants like that don't sit next to them.
Speaker 1: Once it ingests this huge mass of meat, it travels
Speaker 1: undigested to the stomach, and the stomach you know, stretches
Speaker 1: as it as its needs to do, and there's a
Speaker 1: very powerful stomach acid there which can dissolve a lot
Speaker 1: of those crazy parts at the Komodo just state, but
Speaker 1: not everything, as Robert has thoughtfully pointed out, tell me
Speaker 1: about the people who are shipwrecked on the on the
Speaker 1: island with Commodo dragons. Yeah, so there's a news story
Speaker 1: of ways back about some divers who were left stranded
Speaker 1: on a diving expedition. They swam to shore and who
Speaker 1: they're so excited they finally made land, and um, they
Speaker 1: had to wait for a rescue. I guess somebody. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know how they got said rescue, but
Speaker 1: they got onto this island, and the island happened to
Speaker 1: be populated by Komodo dragons, and the Komodo dragons, of
Speaker 1: course have this very keen sense of smell, and they
Speaker 1: were able to spot the divers. And so for the
Speaker 1: next few days, while the divers waited for a rescue,
Speaker 1: they had to fight off Komodo dragons by like screaming
Speaker 1: at them and throwing rocks at them. So can you imagine,
Speaker 1: I mean, you finally swim to shore, you know, you're
Speaker 1: on tropical islands kind of like lost. Yeah, perhaps except
Speaker 1: the shorter duration. If you're on the island of the
Speaker 1: Komodo Us and eventually you get saved, but not before
Speaker 1: having to fight off committed dragons. They're not above taking
Speaker 1: on human prey, especially if if you're wounded and they're
Speaker 1: protected species. So you get shipwrecked on an island full
Speaker 1: of komotos, you can't very well just go around braining
Speaker 1: them in the head with rocks and frying them up yourself,
Speaker 1: and good luck competing with them, right, So did you
Speaker 1: interview the guy, Yeah, you interviewed one of the uh,
Speaker 1: the cameraman on that particular shoot, and it really really
Speaker 1: really fascinating story, just the filming of it because they
Speaker 1: had to just they had to march miles to this site,
Speaker 1: to this watering hole every day. They couldn't actually spend
Speaker 1: the night out there because it was too dangerous. Um
Speaker 1: you know, they had to stay at this camp. So
Speaker 1: they're lugging all this equipment out and then they ended
Speaker 1: up just having to wait for this to happen, wait
Speaker 1: for these komotos too, because the water buffalo is is
Speaker 1: a pretty dangerous prey. It can trample the dragon, it
Speaker 1: can can Yeah, So, like I said, they're opportunists. So
Speaker 1: it's like it's a matter of one of these dragons
Speaker 1: getting cocky enough and hungry enough to dare to take
Speaker 1: that bite, and then it's weeks of waiting for the
Speaker 1: thing to die. And so they had to sit there
Speaker 1: and wait for the water buffalo to die and and
Speaker 1: trail it all over the island. Yeah, and they end
Speaker 1: up getting really attached. I mean maybe not attached, but
Speaker 1: you know, if you're watching like a pack of you know,
Speaker 1: eight komotos um, you know, waiting to devour a water
Speaker 1: buffalo basically devour it alive, you know, who are you
Speaker 1: gonna sympathize with? Not the dragon really so um. So
Speaker 1: there was a whole emotional side to that. And then
Speaker 1: just just being around like too dangerous creatures because water
Speaker 1: buffalo gets stooked, it can run you over. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the komodos, like I said, they're not opposed to taking
Speaker 1: a bite out of a human if the opportunity presents itself.
Speaker 1: Did the staff have any close calls. Yeah, yeah, they did. Well,
Speaker 1: they had some some local guides that came along with
Speaker 1: him with sticks. Uh. We just kind of like push
Speaker 1: them out of the way if they got too close
Speaker 1: to the camera. But there was one scene he was
Speaker 1: telling me about where, um, this was early in the chase.
Speaker 1: I guess the water buffalo sor hat a fair amount
Speaker 1: of energy and the water buffalo was moving through the
Speaker 1: forest and the komodos we're chasing after it. So the cameraman,
Speaker 1: the life camera crew, they just said, hey, let's we're
Speaker 1: gonna flank this this this buffalo, get ahead of it,
Speaker 1: film it coming towards us, and then we'll film the
Speaker 1: komodos following it. And I think it was like like
Speaker 1: there were five komodos trailing the water buffalo at that time.
Speaker 1: So he gets ahead and they booth get ahead, they
Speaker 1: set up the camera and they only see four komodo
Speaker 1: dragons and yeah, yeah, and then one of the dudes
Speaker 1: it's like like, hey, they're just four. And then another
Speaker 1: guy goes goes, hey, you know behind you look, it
Speaker 1: turns around and there's a komodo coming right behind him.
Speaker 1: Like the komodo had the same plan as the cameraman
Speaker 1: to flank the prey and you know, one bite from
Speaker 1: those guys and uh, you know it's not a pretty picture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you guys are gonna have to check out Life
Speaker 1: when It comes out, because it's a pretty amazing series.
Speaker 1: Might even make you want to get a pet Komodo.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think on that one you'll look
Speaker 1: pretty awesome being the only person in your neighborhood with
Speaker 1: a Komodo on a chain. Yeah, definitely. So if you
Speaker 1: have any thoughts about commotives or just want to send
Speaker 1: us an email, you know where to find us signed
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, or brush up
Speaker 1: on commotive at um over at the site, or come
Speaker 1: check out the blogs. We're gonna be blogging quite a
Speaker 1: bit about Life when It Starts, aaring and uh, as
Speaker 1: well as any other interesting scientific kidbit that comes our way.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks for listening, guys. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
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