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This week we need to thanks a bunch of listeners for their suggestions: Bowie, Eilee, Pranav, and Yuzu!\n\nFurther reading:\n\nElaborate Komodo dragon armor defends against other dragons\n\nGiant killer lizard fossil shines new light on early Australians\n\nA New Origin for Dragon Folklore?\n\nThe Wyvern of Wonderland\n\nThe Komodo dragon:\n\n\n\nThe beautiful tree goanna:\n\n\n\nThe perentie:\n\n\n\nFossilized scale tree bark looks like reptile scales:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nThis week we\u2019re going to revisit a popular topic we talked about back in episode 53. That episode was about dragons, including the Komodo dragon. Since then, Bowie has requested to learn more about the Komodo dragon and Eilee and Pranav both suggested an updated dragon episode. We also have a related suggestion from Yuzu, who wants to learn more about goannas in general.\n\nWe\u2019ll start with the Komodo dragon, which gets its name because it\u2019s a huge and terrifying monitor lizard. It can grow over 10 feet long, or 3 meters, which means it\u2019s the biggest lizard alive today. It has serrated teeth that can be an inch long, or 2.5 cm, and its skin is covered with bony osteoderms that make it spiky and act as armor. Since the Komodo dragon is the apex predator in its habitat, it only needs armor to protect it from other Komodo dragons.\n\nFortunately for people who like to hike and have picnics in nature, the Komodo dragon only lives on four small islands in Indonesia in southeast Asia, including the island of Komodo. Young Komodo dragons have no armor and spend most of the time in trees, where they eat insects and other small animals. As the dragon gets older and heavier, it spends more and more time on the ground. Its armor develops at that point and is especially strong on the head. The only patches on the head that don\u2019t have osteoderms are around the eyes and nostrils, the edges of the mouth, and over the pineal eye. That\u2019s an organ on the top of the head that can sense light. Yes, it\u2019s technically a third eye!\n\nThe Komodo dragon is an ambush predator. When an animal happens by, the dragon jumps at it and gives it a big bite from its serrated teeth. Not only are its teeth huge and dangerous, its saliva contains venom. It\u2019s very good at killing even a large animal like a wild pig quickly, but if the animal gets away it often dies from venom, infection, and blood loss.\n\nLike a lot of reptiles, the Komodo dragon can swallow food that\u2019s a lot bigger than its mouth. The bones of its jaws are what\u2019s called loosely articulated, meaning the joints can flex to allow the dragon to swallow a goat whole, for instance. Its stomach can also expand to hold a really big meal all at once. After a dragon has swallowed as much as it can hold, it lies around in the sun to digest its food. After its food is digested, which can take days, it horks up a big wad of whatever it can\u2019t digest. This includes hair or feathers, horns, hooves, teeth, and so on, all glued together with mucus.\n\nA Komodo dragon eats anything it can catch, and the bigger the dragon is, the bigger the animals it can catch. One thing Komodo dragons are just fine with eating are other Komodo dragons.\n\nAs we mentioned a few minutes ago, the Komodo dragon is a type of monitor lizard, and there are lots of monitor lizards that live throughout much of the warmest parts of the earth, including Australia. Yuzu suggested we talk about the goanna, which is the term for monitor lizards in the genus Varanus, although it\u2019s also a term sometimes used for all monitor lizards. Goannas are more closely related to snakes than to other types of lizard.\n\nLike the Komodo dragon, the goanna will eat pretty much any animal it can catch, and will also scavenge already dead animals. Smaller goannas mostly eat insects, especially the tiny goanna often called the short-tailed pygmy monitor or just the pygmy monitor.