Ten-foot-long reptiles in Indonesia have the taste for human flesh, and it’s the fault of…the Nature Conservancy?
That’s what some of the locals are saying. According to the Wall Street Journal, a Komodo dragon killed a young boy last year near the dragons’ main home, Komodo National Park, and since then dragon attacks on people have become much more frequent. And one reason the Komodos have started feeding on the locals, they say, is that they have stopped feeding the Komodos.
Many of the local people view the ancient lizards as their friends and family members reincarnated, so harming the dragons is a no-no. In fact, villagers frequently left goats and deer tied up as a feast for the dragons, a la Jurassic Park. But when the Nature Conservancy inspected the park, at the behest of the Indonesian government, they said the locals must stop hunting deer so the park would remain wild and the lizards would not become domesticated. With no easy meals lying around waiting for them anymore, Komodos might have moved to hunting an easier kind of prey: People.
Not so fast, say representatives of the Nature Conservancy—the real reason for the dragon aggression is that too many people live in the area now, and they’ve pushed so far into the park that there’s no way to keep the dragons out of their villages. The idea that animal sacrifices were keeping the Komodos at bay, they say, is just superstition.
Still, that’s not likely to soothe the father of the boy killed last year: He blames the hunting ban, and not the dragons themselves, for his son’s death.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Markofjohnson
September 18th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Such a strange animals out there!
March 27th, 2009 at 2:18 am
Yes if hungrey you can’t blame them. I so love the dragons,and i so love the indonesions.I’m in the middle it seems . I’ve ben there 3 times and i Love both.So i’ve got to think this over?
March 29th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
It is a very sad day when people aren’t able to kill preditors who obviously pose a real threat to humans. The Nature Conservancy takes a position of protecting extremely powerful and dangerous animals. If I were the Indonesians, I would kill them, or continue to feed them to keep them away from human populations. Period.
April 3rd, 2009 at 2:49 pm
It is a very sad thing that people moronically want to eradicate predators, especially ones that have coexisted with people for thousands of years without any real problems. I think Sofia is hasty in her kill’em all response. I can only hope she is joking.
April 3rd, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Additional note: the guy was trespassing on an island that rarely sees human visitation.
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:00 am
[...] found in this Disney movie. What could Elliott do besides turn invisible? It’s not like his saliva contained harmful bacteria that resulted in lethal [...]
July 26th, 2009 at 11:46 am
they should kill all these stupid lizards and stop the attacks
you people that think they should keep them are stupid because you’re not living there so its easy for to say that they should live, what about the indonesians? that have to live with them everyday
sorry about my stupid grammar im in a rush