Watch This Insatiable Komodo Dragon Slurp Down a Giant Eel Like Its a Bite-Sized Appetizer
This is a very large eel for any animal to tackle! But the predator featured in this clip is no ordinary animal. It is a Komodo dragon – a magnificent reptile and ferocious carnivore. In the clip at the bottom of this page, we see the Komodo dragon slurping down the entire eel in one go. Before long, the fish has completely disappeared and the giant lizard can move onto its next meal.
What Do Komodo Dragons Normally Look Like?
Komodo dragons are the world’s largest living lizard species. Younger individuals are slender and quite agile but as they get older, they become more robust and their bodies flatten. The males are larger than the females and they can reach up to 10 feet in length. Males can also weigh up to 300 pounds. They have a typical lizard-like body shape with a long neck and a powerful tail. Most are gray in color and their skin is often compared to chain mail. This is because it is covered in osteoderms which are boney deposits that form plates.
What Do Komodo Dragons Normally Eat?
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Experts describe Komodo dragons as opportunistic carnivores which means that they will feed on just about any animals that they come across. They do hunt live animals, but they will also eat dead creatures if they come across them. Adult Komodo dragons are able to tackle larger animals including wild boars, deer, and water buffalo. Younger individuals feed on smaller lizards, insects, and birds. We don’t know if this eel was alive or dead when the reptile came across it.
How Do Komodo Dragons Normally Ingest Prey?
This is eel is obviously being swallowed whole! However, Komodos are also capable of tearing large prey apart. They swallow by pushing the prey down their throat whilst moving their flexible jaws forward to engulf the meal. They have a bony structure at the back of the throat, called the hyoid apparatus, which moves back into the esophagus to allow the food past. They also bend their neck muscles from side to side to move the food through the esophagus. You can see the individual in this clip doing exactly that.
Komodo dragons have a very high ingestion rate and have been seen eating huge wild boars in 17 minutes! They make one large kill a month and in between they keep themselves topped up with smaller pray such as this eel, rats, and birds.
