UNION-TRIBUNE (San Diego, California) 26 August 06 Researcher To Share Komodo Dragon Tales (Pat Sherman)
Escondido: While some have made their fame wrestling crocodiles, Andy Phillips has tussled with 200-plus-pound Komodo dragons.
As a deputy director of conservation research for the San Diego Zoological Society, Phillips studies large lizards such the Galapagos iguana and the Komodo dragon, one of about 40 species of carnivorous monitor lizards.
Earlier this month, Phillips of San Marcos traveled to Komodo National Park, a nature conservancy in the center of the Indonesian archipelago. He will share photographs and stories from his trip during “A Taste of CRES,” a new educational program geared toward adults, at the San Diego Wild Animal Park's Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for Conservation Research.
The event, from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Sept. 2, will include a tour of the facility, a wine-and-cheese-tasting reception.
Phillips has studied Komodo dragons for the past 25 years, including five spent researching the natural population at Komodo National Park.
“Even though the dragons have been a scientific curiosity for a long time, not much was really known about them in a true scientific sense,” he said.
Considered a “living dinosaur,” the Komodo dragon has walked the Earth for about 40 million years. Despite their size – the Komodo is the largest living lizard – the reptiles can still outrun humans over short distances and have been known to attack and eat them.
Once every few years, someone from one of the villages within Komodo National Park inevitably winds up on the menu, Phillips said, though the lizards typically go after smaller prey, such as deer, cats, goats, dogs and wild pigs. The dragon's saliva is extremely toxic, containing more than 50 types of bacteria.
“When it attacks prey like a large deer, it generally doesn't kill it outright, like a lion does,” Phillips said. “The main thing you have to worry about with the dragons is the bacterial load that they carry in their mouth. It's actually the infection after the bite that causes the death in most of the animals.”
Though the coldblooded creatures are protected on the four small islands of Komodo National Park, they are not protected on Flores, a larger island to the east.
“They're not hunted, but they're killed, as they're considered a pest,” Phillips said. “In that part of the world, just like everywhere else, the human population is ever-expanding.”
Part of Phillips' research involves determining ways to increase numbers of the endangered reptile without encroaching on the existing dragon population. Researchers are trying to determine how much food is necessary to sustain a dragon population in a given area.
“Dragons have to eat only about one-tenth of the amount that humans do because they don't produce any body heat,” said Phillips, who has a doctorate from the University of California Davis. “A 200-pound dragon has to eat, basically, its body weight every year probably a Big Mac every other day.”
More than 800 of the lizards in the park are equipped with identification chips or Global Positioning System collars so they can be monitored at each stage of their lives, Phillips said. Naturally, for a lizard to be studied or implanted with a tracking device, it must first be captured.
“I'm 5-foot-10 and weight about 190,” Phillips, 55, said. “It takes about four people my size to manage one animal.”
Phillips may show footage of himself and fellow researchers capturing dragons, though he won't be displaying one of the 10-foot-long creatures, he said. “If I did, probably my foot would be in its mouth.”
What: “A Taste of CRES” (with Komodo dragons)
When: 4:30 to 7 p.m. Sept. 2
Where: San Diego Wild Animal Park, 15500 San Pasqual Valley Road
Cost: $49 per person
Information and reservations: (760) 738-5057.
Researcher To Share Komodo Dragon Tales