29: Delacour's Langur & Komodo Dragon

Ellen: Hi there! This is Ellen Weatherford.

Christian: And Christian Weatherford.

Ellen: And this is Just the Zoo of Us, your favorite animal review podcast where we take your favorite animals and we review them and rate them out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity and aesthetics.

Christian: We are not zoological experts. We do a lot of research and we try our best to make sure we're presenting information from trustworthy and good resources.

Ellen: Before we get into it today, I just want to real quick say that if you are listening to us in Jacksonville, Florida and you want to come see us, we are having a live show at Cultivate on Saturday, November 30th so come hang out with us in the real world.

Christian: Yeah, and not just Jacksonville listeners, the general Northeast Florida folks or you know, if you want to make that trip, do it.

Ellen: If you're listening to this in Canada, Europe...

Christian: I guarantee it'll be warmer.

Ellen: That's absolutely true. It is a little bit chilly today. Today it was 50 degrees this morning.

Christian: Fahrenheit.

Ellen: That's true. Yeah, Fahrenheit. So it was a little chilly, which I know probably to people that might be listening up north in Canada or perhaps the UK, it might sound pretty not cool of us to complain about it being 50 degrees, but we're bundled up in sweaters and the dog is sleeping on a heating pad right now.

Christian: Had to bust out the long sleeve t-shirts.

Ellen: We did! I'm wearing long sleeves today for the first time in a while. So, it's getting a little chilly here, but it's still nicer than it is up north, so if you're feeling a little snowbirdy, you can come down to Jacksonville and hang out with us.

Christian: Do it. So, who's up first?

Ellen: Me, it's my turn.

Christian: What do you got for us?

Ellen: This week I'm talking about Delacour's langur. Before I get any further into this, I want to know what you think a langur is.

Christian: Is it a mammal?

Ellen: Yes.

Christian: Okay. Starting off strong. Is it a monkey?

Ellen: Yes it is. It's a monkey.

Christian: Okay, here we go. Here we go.

Ellen: Where do you think they live?

Christian: What was the first word? Delacour?

Ellen: Delacour's langur.

Christian: Africa.

Ellen: Nope.

Christian: Dang it!

Ellen: Sorry.

Christian: Asia?

Ellen: Yes. Yeah, so the scientific name of this species is Trachypithecus delacouri.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: This species was submitted by our friend Sarah, who is on Twitter with the Twitter handle @LangurLover. So Sarah loves langurs and requested that we talk about langurs.

Christian: Okay!

Ellen: Yeah. Which I honestly had never even heard of a langur before, so...

Christian: Me neither. I just got lucky on a couple of those guesses.

Ellen: You did. You did really good. Just right off the bat, I'm going to say right at the top, this is one of the rarest species of monkeys in the world. They're one of the most endangered species of primates in the entire world. There are very, very few of them. I'm only saying that to preface the fact that it was a little bit challenging to find very much information on them. So the information that I'm getting for my segment I got from a couple of papers. So the first one was by Lee E. Harding, a profile on the species published in the scientific journal Mammalian Species in 2011, and my other source is a dissertation titled the "The foraging ecology of the Delacour's langur in Van Long Nature Reserve, Vietnam" by Catherine Workman at Duke University's Department of Evolutionary Anthropology.

Christian: Interesting.

Ellen: So two pretty good sources that I was able to find for some good information on this langur. So, to introduce you to my new friend, just some basic details. Their adult size is about 2 feet, or 60 centimeters long. Their tail is about 3 feet or 90 centimeters long. So the tail is longer than the body.

Christian: Yeah, they're like three-fifths tail.

Ellen: They're mostly tail. So the tail is huge. It's this big, bushy tail. The males are a little bit bigger than the females and they are found in Vietnam, but very specifically, their biggest viable population is found in Van Long Nature Reserve, and they live in limestone karst forest. This was a new word for me to learn. Karst.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: This is an area with a landscape that's formed by eroded limestone.

Christian: Oh, interesting.

Ellen: Yeah. So the limestone erosion forms structures that could be caves, they could be towers, they can be cliffs. Sometimes there's even like underwater river structures.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: But you see this kind of imagery a lot when you see especially videos of the landscape in Southeastern Asia, right? You think of those like big jutting, limestone towers that you'll see towering over forests and stuff.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: This is what I'm talking about. Limestone karsts.

Christian: Okay. Interesting.

Ellen: I had heard of these areas, but I didn't know that there was a word specifically for that. So that's where they live. Now, the taxonomic family for this species is called Cercopithicidae. This family is the Old World monkeys.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: So first, I'm going to talk about the difference between apes and monkeys. Generally speaking, you can tell an ape from a monkey by the tail and whether they have one or not. Generally speaking, if they don't have a tail, they're probably an ape, unless they're a Barbary macaque, which is a monkey, but it doesn't have a tail.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: But apes are also much larger than monkeys. So when you're thinking of apes, you're thinking of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans. They're just much chunkier. They're a little bit more substantial. And then monkeys tend to be a little bit more slender. They're a little bit more made for jumping around in the trees, and they have a tail. Within the monkeys, there are two different groups of monkeys. There's the Old World monkeys, or the catarrhines, and then there's the New World monkeys, or the platyrrhines. And those names have to do with the shapes of their nose. But the common names of Old World and New World refer to their locations. So Old World monkeys are found in Africa and Asia, and then New World monkeys are found in South America. Are you keeping up so far?

Christian: Yeah. What I was thinking, what about the ones in North America? Probably also New World?

Ellen: What ones in North America?

Christian: There are monkeys in North America. Right?

Ellen: They came from South America.

Christian: Oh, they're not...

Ellen: They're not native to here.

Christian: Oh man. Well, I mean until about less than a year ago, I didn't know there were monkeys in North America.

Ellen: Right, right. We were in Fort Lauderdale a few months ago and we saw some monkeys just running around in Fort Lauderdale and they were like, jumping on cars and stuff.

Christian: But you know what? I should retract. It was actually long ago when we saw monkeys in Mexico.

Ellen: Yeah, I mean that's still Central America, you know?

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Okay. I guess I should say Central and South America is where you'll find monkeys.

Christian: Okay, cool.

Ellen: So one of the big differences between Old World monkeys and New World monkeys is that New World monkeys typically are the ones with prehensile tails. Old World monkeys have the long tail, but it's more for balance. They can't grip things with it. So I'm going to get into my ratings for this animal. I'm going to start with effectiveness, and if this is your first time joining us, we define effectiveness as physical adaptations that an animal has that make it a little bit better than others at doing what it's trying to do or just let it do a good job. These are physical advantages. It has. I'm going to give the Delacour's langur a 7 out of 10. They have that long bushy tail that I mentioned, but like I said, it is not prehensile. It's made for balance, so they will hold it in different ways that let them navigate narrow passages a little bit easier. So they actually spend most of their time on rocks and cliffs, more so than in trees. They spend most of their time hanging out on the rocks. They walk and run more than twice as often as they climb. So they use that big thick tail to balance and give it an advantage not only in the trees but on the jagged karst surfaces.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: It's pretty cool. So they've kind of translated that skill of running around in the trees over to running around on cliffs. What's interesting about that is they aren't actually evolved to be adapted to these limestone karsts. They weren't originally meant to be there.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: So this is implied by two different factors. This information is coming from that dissertation that I mentioned. So the first factor is diet. So they're folivores. They eat mostly leaves, but some other little plants, like fruits and seeds, stuff like that. But like most of what they eat is leaves. The plants that they eat the leaves from are not endemic to limestone karst habitats. So they probably didn't evolve in those habitats because if they did, their diet would probably be more specialized to those plants.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: That implies that their habitation of these areas is a little bit more recent. The second factor is something that I had never heard of, but I had a really good time learning about it. It's called their intermembral index. This is a ratio that describes the proportional lengths of an animal's limbs to each other, specifically their forelimbs to their hind limbs. This is converted into a percentage. So to give you an example, a human, think about the way that a human is shaped. Our legs are much longer than our arms, because we get around with our legs, we use our arms for other stuff, but our primary locomotion is our legs. So having much larger legs than arms, we have an entire memberal index of around 70%. however, a chimpanzee who spends more time swinging and hanging in trees than a human has much bigger arms, and their arms are actually a little bit longer than their legs.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: So that gives them an intermembral index of closer to 110%.

Christian: Yeah, yeah.

Ellen: So this makes sense so far.

Christian: Yeah. So, anything over 100%implies arms longer than legs.

Christian: Yes. For Delacour's langur, their intermembral index is around 76%, which is what you would expect of a primate who does a lot of leaping and jumping, like across tree limbs. But based on their jagged rocky habitats, you would probably expect them to have longer forearms to give them more stability as they're walking across the cliffs and make them better at like, climbing and getting around on the rocks. You wouldn't expect their body to be shaped like that for where they live, suggesting that where they live is not where they were supposed to live. At least they haven't lived there for long enough to physically adapt to it. This all suggests that they're living in these karsts out of necessity rather than preference or adaptation. This is likely resulting in them being forced into these areas by deforestation and agricultural conversion. So the forests that they should be living in are being repurposed, and it's not an option for them anymore. So they're being forced into these areas.

Christian: Right, okay. Because it's not like the limestone just popped up one day, right?

Ellen: The limestone's been there forever, but they haven't lived there forever. They're kind of just trying to do their best with what they've got.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: So that's why I gave them a 7 out of 10, is that they're not perfectly adapted to where they live, but they're flexible enough that they can still live in a place that they're not necessarily made for.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: That ties into the next category for their ratings, ingenuity. We define ingenuity as behavioral adaptations that give an animal kind of an advantage over others or that give it a better time of solving the problems it needs to solve everyday. Give them an 8out of 10.

Christian: Alright.

Ellen: Monkeys tend to be pretty clever. So these are Old World monkeys. Old World monkeys have been shown to have comparable intelligence to apes in terms of spatial understanding, tool use and social intelligence. So this suggests that they're probably similarly intellectually competent. Even though I couldn't find very much evidence to suggest tool use for this specific species, although they don't eat anything that would necessarily require the use of tools. It's just leaves, right? You don't need anything to get a leaf. It would make more sense that they ate things like insects or like fruit that was hard to get at, that would require them to use something to get to.

Christian: Yeah. Cause like for me the poster child of animals using tools would be like an ape using a twig to get termites out of a mound.

Ellen: Right. And they don't do that.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: So it's not something that they need to do. I'm sure if they needed to, they could. By nature of being a monkey, which tend to be pretty smart. So I did kind of give them a bump because even though they're not physically adapted to them, they use the rocks and ledges of the karst environment to their advantage. So they're not only chilling out on the rocks, they're taking shelter from the heat and the sun in the caves. So there's lots of caves in these areas and they'll chill out inside of there, which is not a thing that monkeys typically do. They don't usually go into caves, but they'll go in there to take shelter from the weather. They will also sun on the rocks to warm up during the winter. So when it starts to get chilly, they will actually lay out on the rocks because the rocks will heat up a lot quicker than the surrounding area and they'll lay out to sun their bodies.

Christian: Yeah. I was just realizing, you know, Vietnam has some very intense rainy seasons.

Ellen: Yeah. And also some intense heat too. It gets really hot. Yeah. They kind of use the rocks to their advantage even though they're not necessarily physically evolved to live there. So another thing that they do is that when they're scaling the rocks, they follow behind each other in single file. So this makes it a lot safer for them to travel in groups, because they do group up rather than each monkey individually finding its own way up the cliff. They travel as a group in single file.

Christian: Yeah. So they'll be like, "Oh, the monkey in front of me found a safe handhold. I'll use that one."

Ellen: Yeah. So it just makes it a little bit easier for them to travel together. Something that I really enjoyed that I thought was really kind of adorable, the dissertation that I mentioned earlier by Workman noted young langurs jumping off of the rocks into trees below and then climbing back up and doing it again.

Christian: Parkour!

Ellen: It's like, it was compared in the paper to like how a human would jump off of a diving board into the water. Like they would jump off of the rock, land in the trees, climb up the rock and jump off again. So they weren't like chasing anything or like, they weren't doing anything, they were just having fun. I think that suggests a level of intelligence, right? That they're doing things for enjoyment.

Christian: Yeah, yeah. I mean it seems a little bit a little dangerous, but hey.

Ellen: I mean, it's thrill seeking, baby. They're adrenaline junkies. They don't care. To talk a little bit about what their social structure looks like, they usually live in groups of harems, which is one male and multiple females, but there are some variations on the structure. Sometimes there'll be groups of multiple males or groups with no males. You know, it can, it can be a little bit different. The males serve as lookouts for the group, sitting high up on the rocks and keeping an eye out for predators or other langurs. They don't typically mesh with other groups. When two groups of langurs cross paths, the males will react defensively. They will first yell at each other. So you got to talk a little trash before you really get into it. So they'll yell at each other first for a little while. Usually one will back down, but if not, they will escalate to chasing each other or even fighting if they have to. So members of those groups bond really closely with each other by playing or by grooming each other. This is mostly females that do this, but sometimes the males will groom each other, like males will groom other males. It's mostly females that do the grooming. So the last kind of note that I had for their behavioral advantages, which I, I read this line in this study and it resonated so deeply with my soul: "resting dominates the daily activity budget."

Christian: Aw, yeah. Put that on a pillow.

Ellen: I was like, yeah, man, same. Resting dominates my daily activity budget. But so there's actually a reason for this. They are lazy on purpose. This strategy, I suppose, of spending most of their time resting allows them to conserve energy and spend more time digesting that like super high fiber diet of like mostly leaves. Right? We talked about this with a sloths.

Christian: Yeah, I was about to say, I think we've, we've seen this a couple of times now with animals that primarily eat leaves.

Ellen: Yeah. If you eat a lot of leaves, you actually aren't gonna end up with a lot of energy to be doing other stuff.

Christian: Like pandas.

Ellen: Yeah. Well, they're not supposed to be like that. I consider this tactical laziness.

Christian: Yeah. I mean, conservation of energy.

Ellen: Yeah. So I enjoyed that. That's my 8 out of 10 for their ingenuity. And finally, this brings us to aesthetics. For aesthetics for this animal I give them a 10 out of 10. This is a gorgeous monkey. Um, I know-, I don't think you've seen it yet.

Christian: No.

Ellen: You haven't seen it yet. So hopefully anybody listening to this would have already had a chance to Google them real quick.

Christian: I do have a mental image. I'm kinda curious to see how it stacks up.

Ellen: Can I hear your mental image first? What do you think they look like?

Christian: I'm imagining it's like, a golden fur...

Ellen: Nope.

Christian: No? Dang it...

Ellen: What do you think their face looks like?

Christian: I'm imagining a, almost a spider monkey type face.

Ellen: Okay. They have the flat face, like those other types of monkeys. It's not a long face like a, like a lemur or something.

Christian: Sure.

Ellen: But so the body is mostly black. Now here's the kicker. Here is the selling point of Delacour's langur: they're wearing white shorts.

Christian: Whaaat?

Ellen: They have a black body and white shorts. It's like this patch of white fur that starts at their waist and it goes down to like, just above their knees. It's the best thing I've ever seen in my life. It also makes them look kind of like a panda a little bit. It's similar to a panda's markings.

Christian: Interesting.

Ellen: Yeah. I think it looks panda-like. They also, on top of their head, they have this crest of hair that looks a bit like a mohawk.

Christian: Oh boy.

Ellen: Yeah. So it gives their head this teardrop shape. Their head is shaped kind of like a teardrop, how it tapers at the top because of this Mohawk.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: So what this reminds me of is the chaos from the Sonic the Hedgehog video games. There are these gardens where you take care of these little adorable creatures called chaos, and they have that teardrop-shaped head and they're really cute.

Christian: I'll have to take your word for it.

Ellen: It's adorable. Trust me. Now, the babies are bright orange.And they have these huge giant ears. Big round ears, and they stick straight out on either side of their head, and the head is onion-shaped, so they have this big orange onion head and giant ears and it's perfect. And then they turn gray and then they turn black. It's the cutest thing.

Christian: I bet it's so the parents can keep track of them easier.

Ellen: It's a little safety vest. It's a high visibility- Oh my gosh, we should just start doing that with like, like human babies in crowded environments and stuff.

Christian: I think you could just connect the tile to like, the back of their shirt.

Ellen: Our little Bluetooth tile?

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Find my child. So yeah, that's my 10 out of 10 aesthetics for this. This is a really beautiful monkey. It's absolutely gorgeous.

Christian: I'll have to look it up afterwards.

Ellen: Okay. Please do. So miscellaneous information: as I mentioned earlier, they are super duper not doing so good numbers wise. Their conservation status is critically endangered.

Christian: Wow.

Ellen: Yeah. This is one of the world's most endangered primates. There is an estimated around 250 left in the world. So there are two primary threats facing this monkey, the first of which is actually hunting by humans.

Christian: Really?

Ellen: So humans hunt them for their bones and tissue, which are ingredients used in traditional folk medicines.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: Yeah, you hate to see it. Another major threat is obviously the heavy loss and fragmentation of their habitat. So there's a lot of deforestation that has forced them into those limestone cliffs, and also there's quarrying for limestone. Nowhere is safe, right? Like the forest and the limestone are both kind of under attack. So in more recent years there's been actually a pretty decent little increase in their population, like over the last decade or so. There have been massive conservation efforts including the establishment of the nature reserve that protects the area where they live in, and the nature reserve is actually equipped with dedicated staff and guards to deter poaching. And they've started to reintroduce captive-bred langurs into the nature reserve.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: So they've been breeding them in captivity, there's only like 19 of them in captivity.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: So they've started breeding them in captivity and then reintroducing them into the wild, and they're starting to actually take off. So in much more recent studies of their populations, their numbers have increased a lot.

Christian: Good!

Ellen: So it seems like they're on an upswing, but still, I mean it is precarious. So there are a lot of organizations that are putting a lot of work into making sure that they stay on an upward trend. The ones that I could find were the Rainforest Trust and this organization called Flora and Fauna International. So they're both kind of putting a lot of footwork into helping out this monkey. I wanted to kind of spotlight it because I had never heard of it, and it ended up being really, really interesting and cool and beautiful, and so I wanted more people to know about Delacour's langur.

Christian: It's a good one.

Ellen: Yeah, that's my segment. That's my animal for this week.

Christian: Well, thank you, honey.

Ellen: You're welcome. Before we do Christian's animal, just a real quick shout out to our Patreon supporters this week, I would like to thank Briana Feinberg, Krystina Sanders, the Jungle Gym Queen, and Jacob Jones.

Ellen: Okay, baby. What you got?

Christian: All right, so this week I bring you in the listeners the Komodo dragon.

Ellen: Fantastic. Absolutely incredible.

Christian: Yes. This species was submitted by Kyle Rauch.

Ellen: Thank you.

Christian: And also the Varmints! Podcast.

Ellen: We love them. They're our very good friends.

Christian: Very good. The scientific name for Komodo dragon is Varanus komod- komodoensis.

Ellen: Komodoensis?

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: Oh, interesting. You said commode for a second, which- I don't know if this is elsewhere in the world, but in the American South, a commode means toilet.

Christian: It does. My information is primarily coming from the Smithsonian National Zoo website, found out nationalzoo.si.edu. Let's talk about Komodo dragons. I think this is a very visible animal. It's been in the media lots of times for quite some time.

Ellen: It's a popular boy.

Christian: It is. Let's talk about how big they get. So they weigh around 70 kilograms, or 154 pounds.

Ellen: 154 pounds!

Christian: Yep. The males tend to be longer and heavier than females. The largest verified specimen was 10.3 feet...

Ellen: No it was not.

Christian: Or 3.13 meters long.

Ellen: Stop it.

Christian: And weighed 366 pounds, or 166 kilograms.

Ellen: I'm so stressed out. That's so much. It's so much lizard.

Christian: It's big. So their weight tends to vary greatly, and I'll touch on that on why that is later. Where they are found are a few Indonesian islands called Rintja, Padar and Flores, and of course Komodo.

Ellen: Oh, it's the Island.

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: Oh wow.

Christian: They're named after that Island.

Ellen: Oh, they're named AFTER the Island.

Christian: I assume.

Ellen: That would make sense. Yeah.

Christian: However, they haven't been seen on the island of Padar since the 1970s. These islands are mostly tropical savannah forests. They belonged to the taxonomic family Varanidae, and that consists of most of the monitor lizards.

Ellen: So it's a type of monitor lizard?

Christian: Yeah, that's a good way to classify it. I'm going to jump right into effectiveness.

Ellen: Let's hear it.

Christian: So this is where the Komodo dragon really shines. I'm giving it a 10 out of 10 for effectiveness. So first, as you might have guessed, it is the largest living lizard in the world.

Ellen: So it is a lizard.

Christian: It is a lizard.

Ellen: Okay.

Christian: Not like crocodiles or alligators.

Ellen: That always trips me up, cause gators I always think look like lizards, but they're not.

Christian: Yeah. They can eat up to 80% of its own body weight. That would be equivalent of me eating about 220 pounds of food.

Ellen: So one of those peanut butter milkshakes that we had a couple of days ago.

Christian: So I mentioned a minute ago that their weights can be pretty drastically different. So this is because it kind of depends on when it was the last time they ate.

Ellen: Oh my gosh. It has that much of an effect?

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: How often do they need to eat?

Christian: I imagine not very often, based on how other reptiles do it.

Ellen: Yeah. Because I know if you have, like for example like a pet snake that is eating like, rats and stuff, you don't need to feed them very often.

Christian: Right. But yeah, so the weight largely depends on when was the last time they ate. Cause if they had just eaten, they're going to be much, much heavier than they normally are.

Ellen: Sure. That makes sense.

Christian: Yeah. They're at the top of their food chain in their environment.

Ellen: Naturally.

Christian: And they're also cannibalistic.

Ellen: *gasp* What?

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: Oh no.

Christian: This is going to be a theme, but let's talk about their food. So the young feed on small lizards, insects, snakes and birds, whereas once they get to 5+ years old, they start eating larger, prey such as rodents, monkeys, goats, wild boar and deer. Sometimes even water buffalo.

Ellen: Oh no. Those things are big.

Christian: They get big. My next point here for effectiveness, they have small bursts of speed. They can reach 10 to 13 miles per hour, or 16 to 20 kilometers per hour.

Ellen: That's okay.

Christian: Small burst of speed. That's not what they depend on though, usually.

Ellen: Right.

Christian: I'll talk more about their hunting methods in the ingenuity section. They have a very good sense of smell. They use their tongue to smell like many reptiles do, and snakes.

Ellen: Yeah, I think of snakes when I think of that like, tongue flicker thing.

Christian: Yep. So they have a big long forked tongue that they'll stick out and pull back in, and will rub against, I think it's called the Jacobson's organ on the top of their mouth.

Ellen: Okay.

Christian: So that's how they get the particles out of the air. So this is their primary way of finding food. They use this smell method and their undulatory walking, where as they're walking, their head is going from side to side so that they can tell, "okay, my head was pointing to the left, I could smell something, but if I pointed it to the right, I can smell it stronger. So it must be that way."

Ellen: Oh, that's why they kind of swagger like that.

Christian: It's part of it. Yeah.

Ellen: Okay. It's so funny to watch them walk, cause it's kind of like my mom's dog. My mom has a big dog with a big tail, and when the dog wags the tail, the tail wags the whole body. Right? So the whole body ends up like, shifting from side to side. And when the Komodo dragon walks, it kind of has that sachet to it a little bit.

Christian: Yeah. So that's it trying to get a direction.

Ellen: What catwalk anthem would you play to a clip of a Komodo dragon walking?

Christian: "You can tell by the way I use my walk..."

Ellen: I was also thinking that too! I was also thinking "Stayin Alive" by the Bee Gees.

Christian: Thanks. So yeah, that's how they find their prey. They can smell carrion, or rotting flesh...

Ellen: Sure, dead stuff.

Christian: ...From up to two and a half miles away, or four kilometers away.

Ellen: You're never safe.

Christian: Next is their sight. They can see objects as far away as 985 feet, or 300 meters. Or, to put that in perspective, 3 football fields,

Ellen: That is way better eyesight than I expected.

Christian: It's different though. So they're better at seeing movement rather than stationary objects, and their retinas have only cones, rather than how our eyes have cones and rods. So that means it's thought that they can distinguish color, but they have poor vision in dim light. Next up is their hearing. They have a smaller hearing range than humans, so they cannot hear sounds like low pitched voices or high-pitched screams. Why they specified it like that, I don't know.

Ellen: They needed you to know the Komodo dragon can't hear you scream.

Christian: So, to be undetected in terms of sound, I guess you just [in a very deep voice] talk way down here.

Ellen: So you've got that covered.

Christian: Yep.

Ellen: So you can- I don't think a Komodo dragon could hear you.

Christian: Yup. I guess you'll have to just scream constantly.

Ellen: Just mask myself with a constant barrage of screaming.

Christian: Yeah. And next is one of my favorite things about them, is their venom and bacteria in their saliva.

Ellen: Here's the moneymaker.

Christian: Yep. So for a long time it was thought that it was just bacteria, but I think it was somewhat recently discovered there's also venom in play.

Ellen: Sure, why not? Just go for both. Right?

Christian: So meat from previous meals get stuck between their teeth, and that encourages bacterial growth. They've been found to have over 50 different strains of bacteria, 7 of which are highly septic.

Ellen: Interesting. So poor dental hygiene is really their strength here.

Christian: "Why are they so deadly?" "It's because they ain't got no toothbrush." And they have a venom gland and their lower jaw.

Ellen: Oh, that too, also.

Christian: Yes. So those two things combined makes it so that when they bite something, that wound is going to be so that the blood can't clot. So that's the effect, and so that leads to blood loss and eventually shock and death.

Ellen: Oh my gosh.

Christian: Yes. The Komodo dragons are immune to both the venom and the bacteria. It's thought that perhaps it's because of antibodies in the Komodo dragons, but they are still researching this.

Ellen: So they cannot envenomate each other.

Christian: Correct.

Ellen: Oh, I guess that's helpful for them... Trying to eat each other.

Christian: Yes. Well, that and also their mating rituals, which I'll talk about later. But they have serrated teeth for tearing through flesh and then they just swallow the whole chunk of meat.

Ellen: So when you say serrated teeth, you mean like kind of jagged like a knife?

Christian: It's hard to describe. You'll want to take a look at it. Like you can see pictures of their teeth. It's very different from what you see in other animals. So it's designed to tear flesh into chunks, which it'll then just swallow whole.

Ellen: Sure. Interesting.

Christian: Yeah. Speaking of, they are efficient eaters, so they'll only leave about 12% of their prey behind when they're done. So they eat bones hooves, hide and intestines.

Ellen: They're not picky, huh?

Christian: Here's the thing though, before they eat those intestines, they will tear them out and swing them around to dislodge their contents before eating those intestines.

Ellen: Now that's pretty clever. They're like, you know what? Okay, we'll eat the bones, we'll eat the innards, we'll eat all that stuff. But I ain't eatin' poop.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: They have standards. Come on Christian.

Christian: So they have their disposition to avoid feces. This is important for later.

Ellen: Oh okay. We'll keep that one locked away.

Christian: Yes. I'm going to move on to ingenuity.

Ellen: I cannot wait.

Christian: I'm giving them a 7 out of 10 for ingenuity.

Ellen: That's decent.

Christian: One: Vomit for speed.

Ellen: What? Nuh-uh.

Christian: Where's what I mean by this...

Ellen: Wait, hold on. Did you get, did you get your Just the Zoo of Us notes and your Sea of Thieves strat notes confused?

Christian: Nope! So earlier we talked about they can eat so much that they increase their body weight by about 80%. So this of course slows them down. So if they find themselves in a situation where they are threatened and they need to run, they will vomit up their meal to lessen their weight so they can move faster.

Ellen: She can't take much more captain! We've got unload! *blech*.

Christian: Go, go, go! That might double as leaving food behind for whatever threatened you.

Ellen: It's it's also bait. It's also a quokka strategy. Okay, so here's my idea for a video game where you play as a Komodo dragon.

Christian: Okay.

Christian: So you have your tank mode, where you've just eaten a bunch of food and that's when you get a defense and an HP buff. And then, when you need to switch to DPS, you puke up all your food...

Christian: As a projectile. You get one projectile for this.

Ellen: Yes, it's an AOE, it's a projectile that does splash damage. And then you're, and then you switch to DPS and you take a cut to your defense and your HP, but you get a speed and an offense boost.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: So that's my, that's my idea for a Komodo dragon character. TM. Please don't steal.

Christian: So next up on ingenuity is their hunting methods. So earlier I mentioned they have the capability for bursts of speed, but their hunting method is largely based on stealth and power.

Ellen: Stealth?

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: That's unexpected for such a large lizard.

Christian: So they'll basically hang out on game trails, waiting for something to get near them and that's when they'll use their burst of speed.

Ellen: Oh, okay.

Christian: So they actually have a low success rate when it comes to killing its prey outright. So like meaning attacking the prey and killing them then and there. Very low success rate. Where they shine, though, is the long con. So if it gets at least one bite in, that bacteria and venom we were talking about, it will likely kill that prey within four days.

Ellen: Four days?!

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: Who has that kind of time?

Christian: The Komodo dragon.

Ellen: He gets one bite and he's like, "I can wait. Where you going? "

Christian: Well, it's going to run away and that's fine. It doesn't need to keep up.

Ellen: He's like, I'll get there eventually.

Christian: Because guess what? That thing is going to die eventually, and it will smell it and find it.

Ellen: That is very smart. I like the idea of like, getting one hit in and then being like, you know what, "I'm going to conserve energy. I'm just going to mosey on along."

Christian: Yeah. And plus these are islands, so it's, you know.

Ellen: Where's it gonna go?

Christian: So yeah, the animal gets bitten, runs away, eventually dies. The Komodo dragon will find it and start eating it, but also nearby Komodo dragons, will also find it and eat it.

Ellen: Oh, that's true.

Christian: So you'll usually a big group of Komodo dragons eating one big thing.

Ellen: Oh, okay. And are they like chill with each other?

Christian: Kinda... Kinda. It kinda depends. Here's our next very good thing about ingenuity, and I'm classifying it as "avoiding cannibalism."

Ellen: Avoiding cannibalism.

Christian: So this mostly has to do with the young Komodo dragons. The younger Komodo dragons usually are the ones that fall prey to cannibalism from other larger Komodo dragons.

Ellen: Because why not.

Christian: Remember how I said the feces thing was important?

Ellen: Uh huh...

Christian: So the young ones, to avoid being eaten....

Ellen: Uh. I don't...

Christian: Will roll around in fecal matter...

Ellen: This is horrible.

Christian: So that large dragons won't want to eat them.

Ellen: Well, yeah. Huh.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Well, I don't know how this happened.

Christian: I think it's pretty smart, personally.

Ellen: I don't know how we got here.

Christian: Don't eat me, bro!

Ellen: "I'm covered in poop!" Well, I hate that a lot.

Christian: They do one more thing.

Ellen: Oh no.

Christian: So during these kind of feeding frenzies we talked about, the young ones will undergo what the Smithsonian website referred to as "rituals of appeasement," where they'll pace around a feeding circle in a "stately ritualized walk with their tail stuck straight out and throwing their body from side to side." So what I'm imagining here is like a water buffalo, dead, with a bunch of big dragons eating it, and then a bunch of smaller ones just walking around in a circle like, "Yeah! We did it! Yeah yeah yeah!"

Ellen: They're having a little Komodo dragon parade!

Christian: Could you imagine walking up on this?

Ellen: And being like, this is some sort of strange coven.

Christian: I want no part of this.

Ellen: They're summoning something.

Christian: This was the plot of Skyrim, I'm pretty sure.

Ellen: They're resurrecting one of their dead dragon comrades.

Christian: So yeah. Interesting techniques to avoid being cannibalized.

Ellen: That was a lot of information I didn't think I was gonna get.

Christian: Me neither.

Ellen: I wasn't emotionally braced for any of that.

Christian: So, that wraps up ingenuity, 7 out of 10. Moving on to aesthetics, also 7 out of 10. I think they have puppy dog faces.

Ellen: They do! They're so cute!

Christian: Granted they're big puppy dog faces, and danger puppy dog faces, but puppy dog faces nonetheless.

Ellen: They have that rounded nose and kind of a broad snout, right?

Christian: Yeah. They, they remind me of pythons in a way, with the shape of their nose and mouth a little bit. Just a little bit.

Ellen: Yeah. And also when you get that tongue flicking thing in there too, it kind of really leans into the Python face look.

Christian: And then they have these very pronounced brow ridges above their eyes.

Ellen: Yeah.

Christian: It reminds me of Godzilla a little bit. Some of the older designs of Godzilla.

Ellen: Probably that was inspired a little bit by the Komodo dragon.

Christian: Could have been. Um, they're very long. They're long boys, although they're not very exciting in terms of color.

Ellen: That's true. They're kind of...

Christian: A little bland.

Ellen: Which is probably good for camouflage and good for not being seen. Yeah. But is it fashion? No.

Christian: And with everything else we learned about them, I'm pretty sure they don't smell very good.

Ellen: There are so a few things that they could smell like and none of them are good.

Christian: It's either rotting meat or...

Ellen: Or poop.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Limited scent options.

Christian: So that wraps up aesthetics for me. On some little fun facts. Their conservation status is vulnerable. However, they were last assessed in 1996.

Ellen: Oh, it's been a minute.

Christian: It's been over 20 years since they were last assessed, and there's no population trend data on them. They are difficult to determine sex between them cause there's no big morphological differences between males and females, other than a slight difference in size. The males compete for females by wrestling.

Ellen: Wrestling each other?

Christian: Yes. The males wrestle other males. You probably have seen this on nature documentaries where they'll kind of clash up on their hind legs and they'll smash their upper bodies together.

Ellen: Chest bump!

Christian: Trying to push one or the other over onto the ground.

Ellen: Okay, sure.

Christian: Yeah. So a lot of times blood will be drawn during these kinds of wrestling matches.

Ellen: I guess it's a good thing they're immune to that venom, huh?

Christian: Yup, yup. And they also have sharp claws, so there's that. So yeah, that's how they fight for females. Their life span in the wild is thought to be about 30 years.

Ellen: Wow. That's old boy.

Christian: Yep.

Ellen: I guess with how big they are, that makes sense. Usually something that is bigger lives a longer time.

Christian: Yeah. And I don't know if this is just because of our experiences, but I feel like I've seen them in zoos a lot. So there's the Jacksonville Zoo has one or two, I believe the Atlanta Zoo had one and the Smithsonian has one in DC. That's why they had an article about them.

Ellen: I do also feel like they're very popular zoo animals. I don't have data on that, but I do feel like it's a very standard thing to see in a zoo.

Christian: Yeah. I'm not sure if it's just anecdotal because we happen to go to the zoos that have them.

Ellen: Yeah. Maybe they're just easy to take care of. Right?

Christian: Maybe.

Ellen: It's just kind of, it's just a lizard but big. You just feed it some... burgers and stuff. But no poop. They will turn that down.

Christian: No!

Ellen: I don't want it! Yeah, so at the Jacksonville Zoo, they do have at least one big Komodo dragon. I think there's more than one.

Christian: Yeah, I think they have one adult and one or two juveniles.

Ellen: I'm sure the juveniles have grown up by now, cause it's been awhile since we've seen them.

Christian: It takes like five years, though.

Ellen: Oh that's- I dunno. But we have, there's at least one. So it's a really, it's beautiful, beautiful Komodo dragon. What?

Christian: I just had a realization why they had two separate habitats for them.

Ellen: To not eat each other?

Christian: Dang.

Ellen: Yeah. So at the Jacksonville Zoo, there's a big exhibit for the Komodo dragon and then there's a smaller one for the babies. Um, yeah, that makes sense. So they didn't get rekt. Yeah. But like you said, kind of meh. Like, cute, but not super interesting to look at.

Christian: No like, dazzling colors or anything.

Ellen: Yeah. So the really funny thing about the Komodo dragon exhibit at our zoo is that right next to the Komodo dragon exhibit, there is a... What is the material that the statue is made out of? Bronze?

Christian: Yeah, something like that.

Ellen: There's like a bronze statue of a Komodo dragon and it's low to the ground where it's meant to be like a photo op, right? Like it's something you can take a photo with and it's sloped in such a way that it is like perfect for a child to like sit on top of or like, sort of recline across because of the slope. It's like a Komodo dragon with the head sticking up and then the body sloped downwards. However, it's made of bronze, and we are in Florida where it gets HOT.

Christian: Yeah. Because it's in direct sunlight.

Ellen: It's right in the sun, too. And so they have a sign, like right next to the statue that says like, "HOT!" Do not, please do not burn yourself on this Komodo dragon. I'm sure it's happened before where people have just kind of glomped right onto it.

Christian: Well you know, there's usually reasons for signs. You know, they say rules are often written in blood.

Ellen: Yeah. So it always, it always makes me chuckle a little bit to see like it's this very beautiful regal Komodo dragon statue, and then right next to it is like, "Don't do it!"

Christian: Too hot to handle.

Ellen: Yeah. I have some really cute pictures of Isaac hanging out with the Komodo dragon statue. Yeah, it's really sweet. So I love our, I love our Komodo dragon at the zoo.

Christian: That's the Komodo dragon.

Christian: Excellent. Nicely done. Thank you baby.

Christian: Anytime.

Ellen: And thank you to everybody who has spent this time with us today. Thank you for listening and thank you for telling people about us and thank you for reviewing us. Thank you for rating us on iTunes or Podchaser or whatever other sort of cool services you use to listen to podcasts. You can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all that stuff. Just search the title of the show. Come hang out with us in our Facebook group. We have a group and it's so good, it's called Just the Zoo of Us: Official Friend Squad, so come hang out with us in there and it's really fun. If you have an animal species that you want to hear us review, you can send those to us either, you know, get them to us on social media, like tweet at us, send us a message on Facebook, any of that stuff. But if you want to use email, you can send them to me at ellen@justthezooofus.com. A transcript of this episode and a bunch of other ones will be made available at our website, justthezooofus.com, and last note. Thank you Louie Zong for letting us use your song "Adventuring" off of your album Bee Sides as our intro and outro.

Christian: Yeah. Thank you thank you.

Ellen: Thank you.

Christian: Alright...

Ellen: That's all she wrote. That's all we wrote. That's all- Well, that's all we spoke into those microphones.

Christian: Yep. Until next time.

Ellen: Stay warm out there.

Christian: Bye!

Ellen: Bye!