Don’t Forget the Komodo Dragon = Dragon
With its sharp talons, flickering tongue, and immense muscular presence, the Komodo dragon fits the ancient descriptions of dragons worldwide. Sure, it can’t fly, but half of the ancient dragons were also unable to fly. In the UK they were often called “wurms”… And of course you imagined that a dragon was longer than ten feet – well the Komodo dragon had an extinct cousin in Australia that was 21 feet long and weighed 600kg:
Pliny the Elder said, 2000 years ago:
Elephants breed in that part of Affricke which lyeth beyond the deserts….India bringeth fouth the biggest: as also the dragons that are continually at variance with them, and evermore fighting, and those of such greatnesse, that they can easily claspe and wind round about the Elephants, and withall tye them fast with a knot. In this conflict they die, both the one and the other:”
“the Elephant hee falls downe dead as conquered, and with his heavie weight crusheth and squeaseth the dragon that his wound and wreathed about him.”
Chapter XII: “…the dragons ware hereof, entangle and snarle his feet and legges first with their taile: the Elephants on the other side, undoe those knots wiht their trunke as with a hand….the principall thing the dragons make at is the eye…Now these dragons are so big withall, that they be able to receive all the Elephants bloud. Thus they are sucked drie, untill they fall down dead…”
Chapter XIII: “In Ethyopia there be as great dragons bred, as in India, namely twentie cubits long.(approx. 30 feet)
Is it such a stretch, from 21 feet to 30? And what if you knew that in the very land where the Komodo dragon lives today, once existed dwarf elephants, and that it is presumed that the dragons fed upon them? And, if you were an emperor who heard of such a beast, would you not request a breeding pair to put on display?
Anyway, this rant was inspired by learning that on the island in Indonesia where tourists can get close to the dragons, the dragon population is a staggering 1200. Imagine if they cornered you! More at Time.com
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