- A resurfaced video showing two komodo dragons fighting has enthralled the internet.
- The fight was originally reported by South China Morning Post earlier this year, but the ringside footage is enjoying a second life, thanks to Twitter.
- Komodo dragons are solitary and territorial animals, which can sometimes lead to titanic komodo clashes.
If your first thought watching the footage of the sparring komodo dragons was something like, "the new Godzilla looks great," we don't blame you. The massive lizards—which can grow up to 10 feet in length and weigh 300+ pounds—admittedly kind of look like the fabled kaiju.
Komodo dragons, which are native to Indonesia, are the largest known lizard in existence today and is referred to as "ora," meaning 'land crocodile' by local Indonesians, according to Live Science. Komodos are generally solitary animals and highly territorial, and when they get up on their hind legs and start swinging their heads during a fight, they're downright terrifying:
A single bite from a komodo dragon is enough to quickly kill its prey. Using what National Geographic calls a "one-two" killing combo, the creature introduces venom into the body of its prey and causes deadly lacerations with its sharp teeth. NatGeo reports that this "is what makes the dragons so deadly."
Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin discovered that komodos grow osteoderms in their skin that resembles chain mail, begging the question: why do they need that kind of armor when they're already one of the deadliest creatures on the planet?
It turns out komodos need the bony plates for protection against other dragons when they fight. Researchers studied two komodo specimens and noticed that the juvenile dragon did not have the osteoderms while the adult did. And while it's common knowledge within the scientific community that komodos grow these small bones in their skin, it was unknown just how many osteoderm patterns grow in their bodies.
Most lizards tend to have one or two different kinds of osteoderm shapes inside their bodies, but komodos boast four: rosette, platy, dendritic, and vermiform.
If you ever encounter one, stay far away from it–like, a lot farther away than the people seen in the footage above. Komodos may seem like slow movers, but they're actually incredibly fast. Live Science reports that the monstrous lizards can run up to 13 mph in brief spurts though they prefer to catch prey by letting it get close enough to strike and bite.
