They’re big and scary, and don’t have much meat on them. A leopard can more easily kill an antelope and get lots of meat.

K. dragons were there at the same time, the storks obviously had some way of dealing with that lizard predator problem.

I’ve seen Komodo dragons, and I’ve seen (and eaten) the almost as large monitors of the rain forest in Africa, and I’ve seen the marabou storks. These storks are huge, strong, and have giant sharp beaks. I don’t think there’s much of a contest.

Of course, the dragons are still there and the storks are gone.

Good point. The modern Holocene Marabou of the region may have been wiped out by humans more recently, not sure.

I wonder if the storks might even have been dragon predators.

Quite possibly. Or at least, eggs and babies.

How do the African storks get around this problem? Leopards and such are pretty common in Africa. Tree tops, I imagine.

If the Flores stork was flightless, and if K. dragons were there at the same time, the storks obviously had some way of dealing with that lizard predator problem. Of course, the dragons are still there and the storks are gone. Perhaps they had an imperfect predator avoidance strategy.

I wonder if the storks might even have been dragon predators. Dining on the young might keep adults down in numbers. Many ideas are possible when speculation is not constrained by a lot of pesky facts.

But there were Komodo dragons there, right? I’m unclear on whether loss of flight would have been all that desirable. Cost/benefit?