The dragons of Komodo Island
by Robert Doolan
Summary
A civil administrator found ‘mythical’ creatures living on a tiny Indonesian
island. Could such creatures ever have evolved?
The reports sounded fanciful. Local farmers and fishermen told stories of huge reptiles
up to eight metres (26 feet) long living in the dense jungles of a few tiny Indonesian
islands.
Some pearl divers said they shot several monsters which were close to this length.
These giant reptiles allegedly could kill a wild pig or deer with a few rapid swipes
of their tail. But even more unbelievable were the claims that these ‘dragons’
arose from deep under the ground, and that some lived in the trees. Naturalists
dismissed the stories as imaginative nonsense.
It wasn’t until 1910, when the civil administrator on one of Indonesia’s
islands, Lieutenant van Steyn van Hensbrock, obtained specimens of the ‘dragons’
from the island of Komodo, that the outside world began receiving credible confirmation
of the existence of these creatures.
Specimens of these ‘Komodo dragons’ were sent for study to the zoo on
the nearby island of Java. Most of the earlier details, which had been thought to
be fantastic, turned out to be true.
Investigation of the creatures over subsequent years revealed some amazing characteristics.
Komodo dragons bury their eggs as deep as nine metres (30 feet) underground. The
mother lays up to 30 huge eggs at a time. When the young dragons hatch, they begin
their long journey up to the surface of the ground, then they climb trees—where
they live the early portion of their lives.
These characteristics parallel two legendary traits attributed to ‘mythical’
dragons—their reputation for living inside the Earth, and their ability to
fly. These qualities led two authors to comment: ‘They cannot spit fire, of
course, but no one who has seen a Komodo Dragon can be in any doubt that such legendary
beasts (or something like them) could once have existed.’1
Many historians believe that the famous depictions of Chinese dragons were modelled
after creatures like the Komodo dragon because its long, forked, yellow-orange tongue
looked like wisps of fire.2
World’s largest lizards!
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Komodo facts
Komodo dragons are found on only four Indonesian islands—Komodo, Flores, Rinja
and Padar. Padar is a small mass of volcanic rock on which Komodo dragons survive
by digging out sea-turtle eggs.
Young Komodo dragons are skilful and rapid tree-climbers. Often, one- or two-metre-long
dragons can be seen perched in trees preying on monkeys.
San Diego Zoo official, Dr John Phillips, once lamented that little help is given
to saving reptiles, because they are not cuddly and they are not important for medical
research.
Fossil remains of a lizard (Varanus priscus) similar to the Komodo dragon
have been found in Australia which reached an incredible nine metres (30 feet)!
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Komodo dragons today can grow to three metres (10 feet) long and are the largest
lizards on Earth, although the biggest specimens were hunted and killed before the
Indonesian Government set up its current protection policy.
Komodos are a species of monitor lizard, which includes the Australian goanna, a
lizard similar to the Komodo dragon but which rarely reaches lengths of more than
two metres (over six feet).
There were even more colossal specimens in the past. Just as many creatures living
in the environment before Noah’s Flood seemed to reach huge sizes, fossils
of gigantic monitors have been discovered which show that today’s isolated
colonies have come from much larger and more wide-ranging monitors of earlier times.
Fossils of Varanus, the lizard group to which Komodo dragons belong, give
no indication that these giant reptiles evolved from any other type of creature.
One source says that the group was already ‘differentiated’ from other
lizards ‘60 million years ago’.3 Another claims that fossils
‘strikingly similar’ to Komodo dragons have been dated up to ‘130
million years ago’ on the evolutionary timescale.4
Today, Komodo dragons are disappearing. Only a few thousand now survive in Indonesia,
and they have become rarer than pandas in the world’s wildlife sanctuaries.
In zoos, they have to be kept in special large enclosures, with glazed plastic surroundings
that maintain the temperature at 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit).
Even with this special care, a comparative physiologist at San Diego Zoo, Dr John
Phillips, once admitted that it is rare to find a zoo dragon living beyond 25 years.5
In the wild, it is possible they live 100 years or more.6
Evolution problems
While the alleged evolution of Komodo dragons and other monitors seems fanciful,
it should be kept in mind that the supposed evolution of reptiles from amphibians
is even more difficult for the theory of evolution to explain.
For a water-loving amphibian to change into a land-dwelling reptile, at least two
major life-affecting changes would be needed.
The first has to do with the skin. An amphibian’s skin lacks protective devices
to stop it from desiccating, or drying out. This forces it to reside in water or
in very humid places. (Some amphibians have a type of scale in their skin, but these
are thin, and offer no protection against drying out.) Reptiles have a different
type of scale altogether—made of keratin, or horn—which lies in the
outer layer of their skin and is tough enough to prevent desiccation.7
There is no convincing evidence from either biology or fossils that such a transformation
took place.
The second major barrier to an amphibian’s turning into a reptile has to do
with eggs. An amphibian, hatching from an aquatic egg, develops in water in the
larval form known as a tadpole. Reptiles, however, are born with all the functioning
structures of an adult. This applies even to marine reptiles. They do not develop
gills, or the series of sense organs needed by a tadpole, which must be resorbed
and reworked into other structures in the transformation to an adult.8
How such remarkable evolutionary changes supposedly took place has never been satisfactorily
demonstrated.
It is conceivable that creatures like Komodo dragons, or even some similar-looking
types of dinosaurs, were the models for Chinese dragon portrayals. But what is more
certain is that there is no indisputable evidence that reptiles, the larger scientific
category to which Komodo dragons belong, have evolved from non-reptiles. This makes
the alternative explanation—that all groups of reptiles were created by God—the
most credible option.
Related articles
References
- M. Marten and J. Max, The Book of Beasts, The Viking Press, New York, 1983,
p. 110.
- B. Dalton, Indonesia Handbook, Moon Publications, Chico (California), 1980,
p. 242.
- R.P. Mackal, Searching for Hidden Animals, Doubleday and Company, Inc.,
Garden City (New York), 1980, pp. 91–95.
- Same as Ref. 2.
- M.W. Browne, ‘The Fierce and Ugly Komodo Dragon Fights On’, New
York Times, June 24, 1986, Section C, p. 1.
- The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 15th
edition, Chicago, 1992, Vol.6, p. 945.
- ibid, Vol.26, p. 698.
- ibid.
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