Wednesday, April 26, 2006

A Komodo dragon virgin birth

From the Pakistani Daily Times comes the joyful news that Sungai the Komodo dragon has given birth. The question, though, is "how did it happen?"
But Sungai laid the fertilised eggs before even meeting her British lover — and the last time she is known to have had intercourse was two years ago, with another Thoiry Komodo dragon called Kinaam. Thoiry founder Paul de la Panouse told AFP that there were two possible answers to the riddle.
As an aside, I'm amused at the Komodo dragon's rather gruesome method of killing prey, infecting them with the stew of bacteria in the dragon’s thick, copious saliva—bacteria virulent enough to infect and kill deer, goats, water buffalo and other creatures unfortunate enough to get bitten by the drooling reptile.

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