Komodo Dragons
- Thread starter Malta
- Start date
They, in real life, can move pretty fast for such a large cold-blooded creature...
and they hunt as a group, too!
I'd say, in addition to what Riain stated, don't have the die-off of all the other megafauna in the rest of Australasia, a lot of this related to the human population.
They, in real life, can move pretty fast for such a large cold-blooded creature...
and they hunt as a group, too!
Damn, starting to sound like a quadrapedal deinonychus!
in fact, a general thought among paleontologists that i heard is that pack behavior in dinosaurs such as raptors would be more like that of a komodo than a wolf like they are usually compared to (basically because, while they would have been smart for dinosaurs, the notably intelligent modern birds are all smarter than them)
Riain
Banned
Wolves, and other pack mammals are smarter than komodos and actively use teamwork such as driving prey into an ambush of other pack members. I think komodos just run around in groups, not thinking that the lizard beside him will catch the prey for everyone.
Bavarian Raven
Banned
I don't think its really fair to compare modern day bird intelligence with that of a dino. that has been extinct for 65 + million years. For all we know some of them could have been as smart as whales or primates or the such. But unless we can clone one back, I guess we can never know for sure
But unless we can clone one back, I guess we can never know for sure To answer the above, and to avoid getting into a long tangent about dinosaur intelligence (as much as I'd like to,) based on CT scans of braincases and rough brain size/body mass calculations, the majority of dinosaurs would have been roughly as smart as crocodiles. Dromaeosaurids ("raptors") and the like would have poked into the lower avian range for intelligence. Predatory group behavior is... less than clear-cut, not to put too fine a point on it.
Anyway. I don't have much knowledge on the climate of Pleistocene Australia. If it was basically the same as the present, then all you really need to do is keep humans from killing off all the megafauna (both Megalania and its food sources.) Of course, there's a good chance that people are going to get to Australia eventually; even if the First Peoples don't do it (maybe they develop a religion like the ancient Egyptians, worshiping Megalania like the Egyptians worshiped the crocodile? That would be AWESOME) then it'll be colonizers. Nobody looking to settle Australia in the modern era is going to let car-sized lizards (and marsupial lions, and giant wombats, and giant kangaroos...) run around. Unfortunately.
If Australia is like North America, and the megafauna are dependent on savannah that goes away with the demise of the ice, then game over is pretty much the only option.
There should be more religions worshiping large reptiles...
Anyway. I don't have much knowledge on the climate of Pleistocene Australia. If it was basically the same as the present, then all you really need to do is keep humans from killing off all the megafauna (both Megalania and its food sources.) Of course, there's a good chance that people are going to get to Australia eventually; even if the First Peoples don't do it (maybe they develop a religion like the ancient Egyptians, worshiping Megalania like the Egyptians worshiped the crocodile? That would be AWESOME) then it'll be colonizers. Nobody looking to settle Australia in the modern era is going to let car-sized lizards (and marsupial lions, and giant wombats, and giant kangaroos...) run around. Unfortunately.
If Australia is like North America, and the megafauna are dependent on savannah that goes away with the demise of the ice, then game over is pretty much the only option.
There should be more religions worshiping large reptiles...
I thought the Komodo dragon was a pygmy version of the Giant Ripper Lizard.
Same order, different genus.The Komodo perhaps were an island pygmy-ized adaptation of a larger non-Megalania. (He says, reminding self he is not a zoologist
and has only been on island of Flores once in his life, risking same as potential dragon bait... hee, hee, urk!)
I think the general view nowadays is that all the monitor lizards belong to one genus, Varanus. So, "megalania" is no longer a valid genus, but just a common name.
Also, my understanding is that Komodo dragons don't actually hunt in packs, but all kind of congregate around a kill.
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My personal opinion is that monitor lizards would not be competitive on mainland Asia, Africa or the Americas. The Carnivora have almost entirely monopolized the large-predator niches on all the continents except Australia, and they displaced giant birds, terrestrial crocodiles, giant snakes, and several other groups of mammalian predators to get there. I don't see much reason to think Komodo dragons are any more competitive than all those animals the Carnivora outlasted.
But, Australia and New Guinea probably wouldn't be as big a problem: the perentie and goannas and the crocodile monitor had no problems surviving there, so I don't see why there couldn't have at least been pockets of giant monitors surviving in that area of the world.
Hence, the "I'm not a zoologist" disclaimer...
You know, the "pack hunting" attributed to Komodos could be a misunderstanding or a myth. But you hear it a lot. I wouldn't mind a definitive answer on this so I longer repeat it if not true. Damn, I hate to detract from the awesome reputation of the Komodo Dragon...
I don't know how, but IMO it would be a very bad thing, Komodo Dragons, while cool, are also one of the most dangerous animals on Earth, so if they're more widspread, instead of ending-up limited to a few islands, they'll end-up extinct as Humans will consider them an existential threat even greater than wolves and bears in Western Europe.