Honestly, she is like a little puppy.
Good girl.
Isn't that incredible? That switch!
love you Indah!
G'day! It's Robert here!
And today we are going to show you one of my
absolute favourite animals at Australia Zoo...
Indah, the Komodo Dragon.
So come with me... and we'll head into the 'dragons lair'.
Here she is!
Now...
It's early morning still. So she's out in the sun
soaking up the first lot of rays.
[To Indah] Hey, darling! How are you going?
How ya goin' darl? You good?
How are ya mate? Now for the most part, Komodos...
They are an incredibly intelligent lizard.
They really amazing... But...
they usually don't really seek out that sort of physical attention.
They're a little different to a dog or a cat at home.
But Indah honestly, she is like a little puppy.
She's the exception to the rule.
She loves a good scratch.
She loves when you come in here and show her a bit of love.
She's just a beautiful, beautiful lizard.
There's no other Komodo dragon that I'd trust
putting my face this close to.
We're going to be doing a target training session today.
so I'll give it a go...
Good girl!
Love you Indah. [Mwah]
once she knows there's food, though
I'm not going to kiss her on the face.
I trust you, but not that much.
You're still a Komodo. Good girl!
All right. We'll go get you some food, hey?
[to Indah] See you soon!
Basically this paddle has got green on one side...
and then black and white stripes on the other.
Green means: You're going to have to keep it 'chill'.
And then as soon as we flip over to the black and white side, that means.
All right, you can come over here.
Let's go.
Give this a whirl
Alright Indah.
Now, She's she's very, very smart.
She's a very switched on lizard
when I flip this target over, this paddle, that means...
[giggling] 'Come to the target.'
Do I want food or do I want to sit in the sun?
You want some food?
Good job.
So she comes over the target...
and here's your food. Then we flick back over to green.
So now she kind of knows.
All right, it's food time.
She's going to start to get into food mode.
You'll notice that she'll probably be flicking her tongue out.
This is a great little display of a keen Komodo.
A komodo that is starting to get into 'food mode.'
now, lets see if we can get a good little run over to this side.
Alright Indah.
Good job.
There you go, alright Indah.
Now what we might do here...
Let's see if she wants to come up onto this log.
Now, we've got a lot of different things here.
Got a nice big piece of fish for her next. Here you go darlin'
Up here, darl. Here we go.
What do you reckon? wanna come up here?
There ya go, big girl!
Good girl.
And there's your food.
How cool that? Even a big lizard like Indah,
she can easily climb.
Oh, you still got a little bit of fish in there?
Want to come back down here.
She's really keen on that fish.
What do you reckon?
can we come back for that? Want to come down here first?
Good girl.
right here, Indah.
All right, I've got a couple more pieces...
See if she wants to put on a little run.
See how we go.
Here you go, Indah!
Good job.
Here's your sausage.
It's really good mental stimulation for her,
and this is a really good, controlled feeding environment.
Komodos are notorious for going into a bit of a feeding frenzy.
It's a lot of teeth, a lot of claws and a lot going on.
Here to Australia Zoo, we want to make sure that we can
replicate that wild behavior. Have them foraging, hunting, searching.
We do give them large food items as well.
But we really want to make sure that we've got a nice, controlled
feeding environment so that everyone's safe.
And it's also a great way to get out of...
it exactly where we need it to if we're doing a health check up.
Plus, she has to use all of that Komodo intelligence and speed and stamina
to have a good little bit of fun.
We got one more piece here,
so we'll give it one more go. let her walk down that way
and then come straight back up here.