Which giant lizard shares its name with an island in Indonesia?

The Komodo dragon, which reaches three metres and 90 kilograms and is the largest lizard alive. It exists at that size for the reason island animals often do: isolated on a few small Indonesian islands with no large mammalian predators, a monitor lizard was free to take the top job.

How it kills was misunderstood for decades. The story that its bite works through septic bacteria cultured in a filthy mouth was accepted from the 1970s and turned out to be wrong - their oral bacteria are unremarkable. In 2009 researchers demonstrated venom glands in the lower jaw producing compounds that prevent clotting and drop blood pressure. The prey bleeds out.

They can also reproduce without males. Several females in European zoos, kept alone for years, have laid viable eggs - parthenogenesis, and because of how lizard sex chromosomes work, all the offspring are male. A single female washed onto an empty island could in principle produce sons and then found a population with them, which may be part of how they came to be spread across these particular islands at all.