Great idea, but don’t do what these guys did.Five SCUBA divers from Euope went diving in the vicinity of Indonesia in waters known to be very treacherous.They quickly became separated from their boat, and floated in shark infested waters for two days.Then, they found an island, and crawled onto the island to be safe. Big mistake….The island was infested with giant Komodo Dragons who tried, it seems, to eat them. And why not? These humans are well within the normal size range for Komodo Dragons, and were probably pretty easy to catch, being tired and all. The stranded divers kept the giant lizards away by throwing rocks at them.
The divers spent one night on Rinca island before they were rescued. The divers — three from Britain and one each from France and Sweden — were rescued following a massive sea search in the area where they were last seen Thursday plunging into the water from their wooden boat, said Lt. Col. Buce Helo, a local police chief.source
Personally, I think the reports that the dragons were going to eat the divers alive are exaggerated. They were probably simply waiting for them to die so they could scavenge them.But in the end, the divers got away with their lives and a great story.
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Am I the only feeling sorry for the dragons? These divers barged into their territory, threw rocks at them, ate their mussels and generally messed up their habitat. Even if the dragons had managed to catch one of them, the neoprene would likely have been too tough to chew anyway. Now the divers are likely going to publish memoirs about the “ordeal” and the dragons aren’t going to get any royalties either.It sucks to be a reptile.
Actually, the dragons are aggressive enough to try to kill, by simply biding their time after a bite.”One of the ways Komodo dragons kill very large prey is by lying in ambush and taking out big bites as the prey animals go by. The lizards’ mouths are generally storehouses of bacteria from all the dead things they scavenge, so the wound from the big bite is likely to get horribly infected and weaken and eventually kill the prey. We learned that the correct scientific term for this killing mechanism, according to Elliot Gould narrating on some Discovery Channel documentary, is “Mouth of Putrefaction”.”Children have died as a result of dragon attacks, due to blood loss. Keeping the dragon away was the best approach?http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1881632.ece
Actually, recent research has shown the komodo’s bite to be venomous, not just full of toxic bacteria
Well then, it’s a good thing Komodo dragons don’t chew their food.