Komodo dragon attacks terrorize villages

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Komodo dragon attacks terrorize villages

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.

 

Komodo dragon attacks terrorize villages

Residents of Indonesian islands have lived with reptiles for generations

By Irwan Firdaus

The Associated Press

updated 1:42 p.m. PT, Sun., May 24, 2009

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, was doing paper

work 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 zoo exhibits from 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, jaded teeth are the primary weapons.

They deliver these deep, deep wounds, " said Bryan

Fry of the University of Melbourne. " 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.

" Not any more, " he says, carrying a 6-foot-long

(2-meter) stick wherever he goes for protection.

Then, repeating a famous line by Indonesia's most

renowned poet, he adds: " I want to live for

another thousand of years. "

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