KOMODO DRAGON KEYSTROKES LOGGER PLUS

For their size, they have relatively weak bites but they made up for it with strong neck muscles and very sharp teeth. Other studies using finite element analysis have found that other famous predators, like sabre-toothed cats and great white sharks, do similar things. Their skulls take the brunt and their sharp, serrated teeth open considerable wounds in their prey. Biologists watching these animals have noted that when they bite, they often yank their heads back with powerful neck muscles. However, Fry found that its skull is highly resistant to pulling forces, and that's the key to its method of attack. The dragon's skull wasn't much better at coping with twisting or shaking movements either - this is not an animal that can bite and hold onto a prey animal for long. If a dragon bit with that much strength, its skull would fracture. Of the two, the dragon had a much weaker bite, exerting just 39N of force with its jaws compared to the 252N chomp of the croc. Engineers use the method to crash-test cars Fry used it to compare the dragon's skull to that of another giant reptile - the saltwater crocodile. Also known as Megalania, V.prisca was three times the size of the Komodo dragon, making it (to our knowledge) the largest venomous animal to have ever lived.įry used a CT scanner to create a three-dimensional model of a Komodo dragon's skull and he assessed its properties with a technique called finite element analysis. He even managed to analyse a sample of venom, which is loaded with toxins that prevent blood from clotting and induce shock.Īnd as the icing on the cake, Fry concluded that Varanus prisca, a extinct close relative of the Komodo dragon probably also had venom glands. By placing the head of a terminally ill dragon in an MRI scanner, he managed to isolate the venom glands, which turn out to be more structurally complex than those of any other snake or lizard. The wounds provide a large open area for the dragon to inject its venom and Fry unquestionably showed that the dragons poison their prey.

This is a hunter built to inflict massive wounds through a 'grip and rip' style that involves biting lightly but tearing ferociously. The discovery made Fry suspect that Komodo dragons also poison their prey and he has just confirmed that in a whirlwind of a paper, which details the dragon's 'sophisticated combined-arsenal killing apparatus'.īy putting a virtual dragon skull through a digital crash-test, Fry showed that its bite is relatively weak for a predator of its size - instead it's adapted to resist strong pulling forces. After she died, the crabs consumed her body and dragged her bones into their burrows-except of course for the thirteen that Gallagher discovered.But that theory was contested in 2005 when Bryan Fry from the University of Melbourne discovered that a close relative, the lace monitor, has venom glands in its mouth. King thinks it’s likely that Earhart perished on the island as a castaway. “This tells us crabs drag bones,” says Tom King, the group’s former chief archaeologist, “but it doesn’t tell us how far.” A year after the experiment they discovered some bones had been dragged 60 feet from the body, but they couldn’t account for all of the remains.

KOMODO DRAGON KEYSTROKES LOGGER PLUS

Crabs-coconut crabs plus the smaller, more numerous strawberry hermit crabs-swarmed the body, removing most of the flesh within two weeks.

In one, they brought a pig carcass to the island and filmed what happened to it.

TIGHAR has performed several experiments to see if the crabs would drag bones back to their burrows. There are 206 bones in an adult human skeleton-what happened to the 193 that weren’t found? Evidence points to the coconut crabs, who have earned their nickname “robber crabs.” When Gallagher described the site of the discovery he said that “coconut crabs had scattered many bones.” The omnivorous crabs will eat coconuts (of course), fallen fruit, birds, rodents, other crabs-and carrion. Coconut crabs are the largest land invertebrates, and their presence on small islands may have a great effect on the nesting behavior of birds.

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