A giant, fork-tongued lizard
with razor-sharp teeth.
And a bite with bacteria-laced venom
that's seeping into your flesh.
Well, this is no legend.
It’s a Komodo dragon.
Komodo dragons,
also known as Komodo monitors,
are the largest lizards in the world.
As adults,
they have an almost-uniform stone color
and can weigh around 70 kg (154 lb).
The largest Komodo dragon
ever found weighed 166 kg (366 lb)
and was more than 3 m (10 ft) long.
They are powerful, voracious eaters
with a taste for all kinds of meat.
From small rodents
up to a large water buffalo.
Their wide jaws and strong throat muscles
allow them to devour huge chunks rapidly.
And they can eat up to 80%
of their own body weight in one meal.
Sadly, they are an endangered species,
with only 1,380 adult Komodo dragons
left in the wild.
They can be found
in the Lesser Sunda islands of Indonesia.
Most fitting, the island of Komodo.
Here they live on beaches, ridgetops
and even tropical savanna forests.
Just waiting for the perfect chance
to attack you.
Arriving on the island of Komodo,
you’d be excited and looking forward
to some peaceful vacation time.
But as you walk around
the tropical forests,
you’d be blissfully unaware
that Komodo dragons
could already be stalking you.
Their hunting strategy
is all about stealth and power.
It comes down to their sense of smell
when they are on the prowl for food.
And they can pick up the trail
of rotting flesh
from up to 4 km (2.5 mi) away.
For the Komodo,
it's not about taking a whiff of air
with their nose.
Instead, their peculiar method involves
sticking out their long
forked tongue to sample the air.
Then they roll it back in, touching it
to the roof of their mouth.
Here, the tongue rubs against
a sensory organ that can detect different
these molecules.
A Komodo can then use these molecules
as a guide for what
direction to head toward.
Or it can stay perfectly still
for hours, just waiting for their prey.
In this case, it’s you.
Luckily, you’d spot
the yellow-tongued lizard
before it attacks.
Now would be a good time to run.
But with a Komodo's
running speed clocking
in at up to 20 km/h (13 mph),
you wouldn’t get very far.
The dragon would bite down
hard on your ankle.
The pain would be immense,
but you’d fight back.
You’d punch its neck, trying to force it
to let go of you.
But no luck.
Maybe you’d better try prying open
its massive jaws
with your own bare hands.
You’d struggle and struggle,
but it would work.
Although, it would come at a cost.
Your hands would get sliced
by the large,
serrated teeth of the dragon.
Now you’d be bleeding profusely
from the leg and hands.
Time to get away and find help
before the giant lizard
has you for lunch.
But a worse fate may now lay before you.
All over the Komodo dragon's
jagged teeth,
there are bits of meat from its last meal.
Those bits make the perfect
breeding ground
for dangerous strains of bacteria.
And that bacteria
would now be infecting your body.
From your bite wounds,
you could be exposed
to 50 different varieties of bacteria.
Some of these are highly septic,
potentially leading to severe infection.
But the worst still wouldn’t be over.
You would now have venom coursing
through your body too.
This would lower your blood pressure
and prevent your blood from clotting.
You could only have a few minutes left
before you bleed out.
Even if you slow the bleeding,
this would be a terrible way to go.
You could start to get the chills
and a fever.
Your whole body would be in pain.
Eventually, your heart
and circulatory system
would begin to fail entirely.
Blood would no longer flow
to any of your organs,
causing them to fail.
It's likely you wouldn't have the time
to make it somewhere safe.
And the Komodo dragon's
hunt for you would resume.
Remember how they can smell
rotting meat from kilometers away?
Well, your injuries would now attract
every Komodo dragon around you.
And while no Komodo dragon
could swallow you whole on its own,
a group of them
would devour every scrap of your body.
That’s right.
They’d eat your bones
and your intestines,
possibly even swinging them around a bit
to remove all the undigested contents.
What a delicious meal.
As scary and horrible as
this would all be,
you could rest a bit easier
knowing that it's extremely rare.
It happens, sure.
But prior to a deadly Komodo dragon
attack on a young child in 2007,
there hadn't been a single fatal incident
on Komodo Island in 33 years.
Maybe you should be more scared
of another giant predator attacking you.
Like a crocodile.
But that's a story for another WHAT IF.