KOMODO ISLAND, Indonesia – Komodo dragons have shark-like teeth
and poisonous venom that can kill a person within hours of a bite.
Yet villagers who have lived for generations alongside the world's
largest lizard were not afraid — until the dragons started to
attack.
The stories spread quickly across this smattering of tropical
islands in southeastern Indonesia, the only
place the endangered reptiles can still be found in the wild: Two
people were killed since 2007 — a young boy and a fisherman — and
others were badly wounded after being charged unprovoked.
Komodo dragon attacks are still rare,
experts note. But fear is swirling through the fishing villages,
along with questions on how best to live with the dragons in the
future.
Main, a 46-year-old park ranger, who like many Indonesians goes
by a single name, was doing paperwork when a dragon slithered up
the stairs of his wooden hut in Komodo National Park and went for his ankles dangling
beneath the desk. When the ranger tried to pry open the beast's
powerful jaws, it locked its teeth into his hand.
"I thought I wouldn't survive... I've spent half my life working
with Komodos and have never seen anything like it," said Main,
pointing to his jagged gashes, sewn up with 55 stitches and still
swollen three months later. "Luckily, my friends heard my screams
and got me to hospital in time."
Komodos, which are popular at zoos in the United States to
Europe, grow to be 10 feet (3 meters) long and 150 pounds (70
kilograms). All of the estimated 2,500 left in the wild can be
found within the 700-square-mile (1,810-square-kilometer) Komodo
National Park, mostly on its two largest islands, Komodo and Rinca.
The lizards on neighboring Padar were wiped out in the 1980s when
hunters killed their main prey, deer.
Though poaching is illegal, the sheer size of the park — and a
shortage of rangers — makes it almost impossible to patrol, said
Heru Rudiharto, a biologist and reptile expert. Villagers say the
dragons are hungry and more aggressive toward humans because their
food is being poached, though park officials are quick to
disagree.
The giant lizards have always been dangerous, said Rudiharto.
However tame they may appear, lounging beneath trees and gazing at
the sea from white-sand beaches, they are fast, strong and
deadly.
The animals are believed to have descended from a larger lizard
on Indonesia's main island Java or Australia around 30,000 years
ago. They can reach speeds of up to 18 miles (nearly 30 kilometers)
per hour, their legs winding around their low, square shoulders
like egg beaters.
When they catch their prey, they carry out a frenzied biting
spree that releases venom, according to a new study this month in
the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The
authors, who used surgically excised glands from a terminally ill
dragon at the Singapore Zoo, dismissed the
theory that prey die from blood poisoning caused by toxic bacteria
in the lizard's mouth.
The long, jagged teeth are the lizard's primary weapons, said
Bryan Fry of the University of Melbourne.
"They deliver these deep, deep wounds," he said. "But the venom
keeps it bleeding and further lowers the blood pressure, thus
bringing the animal closer to unconsciousness."
Four people have been killed in the last 35 years (2009, 2007,
2000 and 1974) and at least eight injured in just over a decade.
But park officials say these numbers aren't overly alarming given
the steady stream of tourists and the 4,000 people who live in
their midst.
"Any time there's an attack, it gets a lot of attention,"
Rudiharto said. "But that's just because this lizard is exotic,
archaic, and can't be found anywhere but here."
Still, the recent attacks couldn't have come at a worse
time.
The government is campaigning hard to get the park onto a new
list of the Seven Wonders of Nature — a long shot, but an attempt
to at least raise awareness. The park's rugged hills and savannahs
are home to orange-footed scrub fowl, wild boar and small wild
horses, and the surrounding coral reefs and
bays harbor more than a dozen whale species, dolphins and sea
turtles.
Claudio Ciofi, who works at the Department of Animal Biology and
Genetics at the University of Florence in Italy, said if komodos
are hungry, they may be attracted to villages by the smell of
drying fish and cooking, and "encounters can become more
frequent."
Villagers wish they knew the answer.
They say they've always lived peacefully with Komodos. A popular
traditional legend tells of a man who once married a dragon
"princess." Their twins, a human boy, Gerong, and a lizard girl,
Orah, were separated at birth.
When Gerong grew up, the story goes, he met a fierce-looking
beast in the forest. But just as he was about to spear it, his
mother appeared, revealing to him that the two were brother and
sister.
"How could the dragons get so aggressive?" Hajj Amin, 51, taking
long slow drags off his clove cigarettes, as other village elders
gathering beneath a wooden house on stilts nodded. Several dragons
lingered nearby, drawn by the rancid smell of fish drying on bamboo
mats beneath the blazing sun. Also strolling by were dozens of
goats and chickens.
"They never used to attack us when we walked alone in the
forest, or attack our children," Amin said. "We're all really
worried about this."
The dragons eat 80 percent of their weight and then go without
food for several weeks. Amin and others say the dragons are hungry
partly because of a 1994 policy that prohibits villagers from
feeding them.
"We used to give them the bones and skin of deer," said the
fisherman.
Villagers recently sought permission to feed wild boar to the
Komodos several times a year, but park officials say that won't
happen.
"If we let people feed them, they will just get lazy and lose
their ability to hunt," said Jeri Imansyah, another reptile expert.
"One day, that will kill them. "
The attack that first put villagers on alert occurred two years
ago, when 8-year-old Mansyur was mauled to death while defecating
in the bushes behind his wooden hut.
People have since asked for a 6-foot-high (2-meter) concrete
wall to be built around their villages, but that idea, too, has
been rejected. The head of the park, Tamen Sitorus, said: "It's a
strange request. You can't build a fence like that inside a
national park!"
Residents have made a makeshift barrier out of trees and broken
branches, but they complain it's too easy for the animals to break
through.
"We're so afraid now," said 11-year-old Riswan, recalling how
just a few weeks ago students screamed when they spotted one of the
giant lizards in a dusty field behind their school. "We thought it
was going to get into our classroom. Eventually we were able to
chase it up a hill by throwing rocks and yelling 'Hoohh
Hoohh.'"
Then, just two months ago, 31-year-old fisherman Muhamad Anwar
was killed when he stepped on a lizard in the grass as he was
heading to a field to pick fruit from a sugar tree.
Even park rangers are nervous.
Gone are the days of goofing around with the lizards, poking
their tails, hugging their backs and running in front of them,
pretending they're being chased, said Muhamad Saleh, who has worked
with the animals since 1987.
