How big are Komodo Dragons?

[Teuton]

So, is there anything commonly known as a lizard that’s bigger than the Komodo?

[Darren_Garrison]

@Teuton

So, is there anything commonly known as a lizard that’s bigger than the Komodo?

Not any more, thanks to those pesky Australians.

[BMalion]

@Telemark

Then there’s my work on behalf of the International Komodo Dragon Foundation. To protect the Komodo dragon, the world’s largest living lizard, a ferocious carnivore, found on the steep-sloped island of Komodo in the lesser Sunda chain of the Indonesian Archipelago and the nearby islands of Rinja, Padar, and Flores.

Are they of the lizard family?

[Colibri]

@Teuton

So, is there anything commonly known as a lizard that’s bigger than the Komodo?

No.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

It is a rather large island, after all.

[Irishman]

@Colibri

That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m objecting to (and I’m a scientist). It’s OK to have a popular definition of a word, and a more restrictive scientific one, but that doesn’t make the original popular definition wrong. There’s no reason to change the popular definition of a word just because scientists use it in a different way.

Ah, I see what happened. When I said “has to adjust”, it sounds like I’m arguing for changing the word use, but in fact I meant it the other way in agreement with you. Why do we have to change the common word definition to fit a scientific specificity?

But there’s no reason to restrict the perfectly good English word serpents that way. Scientists can always just say they are talking about Serpentes when they want to talk abou that clade. Non-scientists can call any legless Squamata a snake, regardless of what clade it’s in.

You are right. I almost used Serpentes there, but then didn’t inexplicably.

@BMalion

Are they of the lizard family?

Yes, Komodo dragons are of the monitor lizard family, Veranidae.

[QUOTE=Rick Sanchez]
How big are Komodo Dragons?
[/QUOTE]

Big enough to look at humans and think, “Yeah, I could eat that.”

[BMalion]

@Telemark

Then there’s my work on behalf of the International Komodo Dragon Foundation. To protect the Komodo dragon, the world’s largest living lizard, a ferocious carnivore, found on the steep-sloped island of Komodo in the lesser Sunda chain of the Indonesian Archipelago and the nearby islands of Rinja, Padar, and Flores.

Where are they from?

[Filbert]

@CairoCarol

On Rinci (and probably Komodo too, but I don’t know because we didn’t go there), you can hike all around the island with a guide, and see lots of dragons pretty close up along the way. The guides carry big forked sticks just in case, but nothing untoward happened while we were there and I suspect that’s the norm.

When I was there last year, the guides met the boat (all armed with forked sticks), walked us to the guide station/shop to pay the park permit fees, past about 6 big dragons lounging round outside. We then walked round a trail, saw a couple of baby dragons, then back to the shop, at which point all the guides buggered off, right in front of the big dragons, then they left us to walk back to the boat by ourselves, past several other large dragons :rolleyes:

So yeah, I don’t think Rinca’s guides take the whole thing quite seriously.

[MrDibble]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Related question: why are large lizards so common in South and Southeast Asia and Australia? The largest lizards (Komodo dragon, water monitor, crocodile monitor and perentie) are all limited to those areas.

@Riemann

In Africa, I don’t know. Perhaps large land-based reptiles would be too easy a target for the many large predators?

Africa *has * several large monitors. 2m+ is not too shabby. They’re fairly common (I’ve seen both in the wild)