Komodo Dragons Are So Badass They Have ‘Chain Mail’ Embedded in Their Pores and skin

Komodo dragons – the most important, fiercest, most spectacular lizards on our planet – simply bought that rather more superb. A brand new discovery exhibits that beneath their scaly pores and skin, these animals are utterly coated in mail-like armour constructed out of tiny bones, from nostril to tail-tip.

Why would one thing as formidable as a Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) want armour, you ask? These lizards are robust, they’re quick, they’re venomous, they will take down prey a lot bigger than themselves, and their species could also be tens of millions of years outdated.

Effectively, in keeping with new analysis, that armour might be there to guard the lizards from themselves – that’s, different Komodo dragons.

The clue lies in when these lizards develop their bone-mail throughout their growth. Researchers on the College of Texas at Austin and Fort Value Zoo performed detailed CT scans of newly deceased Komodo dragons, an grownup and a juvenile.

They discovered that the grownup was utterly armoured, however the child had no armour in any respect, suggesting that the osteoderms, because the tiny bones are referred to as, do not develop till maturity. And there is not a lot of their pure setting that may threaten an grownup Komodo dragon – besides, perhaps, different grownup Komodo dragons.

“Younger Komodo dragons spend fairly a little bit of time in bushes, and after they’re massive sufficient to come back out of the bushes, that is after they begin getting in arguments with members of their very own species,” defined palaeontologist Christopher Bell of the College of Texas.

“That will be a time when further armour would assist.”

(The College of Texas at Austin/Jackson Faculty of Geosciences)

Osteoderms themselves aren’t a brand new discovery, and in reality they are often present in plenty of dwelling reptiles and amphibians, together with crocodilians, lizards and frogs, and even a mammal, the armadillo.

Over the a long time, these bones have even been documented in grownup varanids or monitor lizards, together with the Komodo dragon.

The primary point out in scientific literature of Komodo dragon osteoderms was in 1928, when naturalist William Douglas Burden famous: “Just lately, trappers and poachers have bagged many skins however, owing to the bony plates or osteoderms, the hides don’t have any business worth.”

Because the pores and skin is often eliminated for anatomical research, precisely how these bones sit contained in the pores and skin of Komodo dragons hasn’t been nicely studied or understood.

As you may think about, Komodo dragon carcasses aren’t precisely straightforward to come back by. That is the place Texas zoos enter the image. A male Komodo dragon at Fort Value Zoo died in 2013 on the age of 19.5 years; the zoo donated his carcass to the College.

At San Antonio Zoo, a child Komodo dragon died at simply two days outdated. They, too, donated the carcass.

(The College of Texas at Austin/Jackson Faculty of Geosciences)

Each our bodies have been scanned utilizing high-resolution X-ray computed tomography (HRXCT), though the mature male was too massive for the machine and solely his head might be scanned. However that was sufficient to disclose some fascinating particulars concerning the dragon’s armour.

As already acknowledged, the infant had no osteoderms. However the male’s head was virtually utterly enveloped in a mesh of tiny bones, with 4 distinct shapes, utterly in contrast to any of the seven different lizard HRXCT scans the group used for comparability (V. acanthurus, V. exanthematicus, V. gouldii, V. salvator, Lanthanotus borneensis, Heloderma horridum and H. suspectum) .

Different lizards appear to have a a lot sparser scattering of bones, typically with areas the place they’re utterly absent, and with just one or two bone shapes. However the Komodo’s head was virtually completely encased – simply the eyes, nostrils, fringe of the mouth, and pineal eye have been uncovered.

 (The College of Texas at Austin/Jackson Faculty of Geosciences)

Above: (A) V. komodoensis; (B) L. borneensis; (C) H. suspectum; (D) V. salvator.

“We have been actually blown away after we noticed it,” stated palaeontologist Jessica Maisano of the College of Texas. “Most monitor lizards simply have these vermiform (worm-shaped) osteoderms, however this man has 4 very distinct morphologies, which could be very uncommon throughout lizards.”

The fuller protection might have had one thing to do with the dragon’s age; at 19.5 years outdated, he was one of many oldest Komodo dragons ever to reside and die in captivity, and it is doable the osteoderms proceed to develop because the lizards age.

Finding out extra Komodo dragons at completely different ages, the group hopes, might assist shed some extra gentle on this mysterious armour.

The analysis has been printed in The Anatomical Report.