Paper Review: Deadly but Not Dangerous — Jessop et al. 2020 on Komodo Dragon Predation Risk

25 min read~3300 words

Table of Contents

• Paper Overview
• Background: Public Perception of Risk
• Methods: Attack Database and Ecological Data Compilation
• Findings: Attack Frequency and Demographics
• Risk per Million Visitor-Days: A Comparative Frame
• Vulnerable Populations
• Quick Facts Table
• Park Mitigation Strategies
• Implications for Tourism
• Myths vs Facts
• Practical Takeaways for Visitors
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Sources

Paper Overview

In early 2020, Tim S. Jessop and colleagues published a plain-language summary under the arresting title "Deadly but not Dangerous: How Ecologically Effective are Komodo Dragons as an Apex Predator?" in the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America (101(2): e01671; DOI: 10.1002/bes2.1671). This piece accompanied the primary research article published simultaneously in Ecology: Jessop, T.S., Ariefiandy, A., Forsyth, D.M., Purwandana, D., White, C.R., Benu, Y.J., Madsen, T., Harlow, H.J., and Letnic, M. (2020). "Komodo dragons are not ecological analogs of apex mammalian predators." Ecology, 101(4): e02970 (DOI: 10.1002/ecy.2970).

The title carries a deliberate double meaning that speaks to both ecology and human safety. At the ecological level, the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is individually capable of killing large prey — deer, pigs, water buffalo, and on rare occasions humans. Yet the research demonstrates that the species is not ecologically "dangerous" in the sense that its predation does not suppress or regulate prey populations the way mammalian apex predators such as lions or wolves do. At the practical level for tourists and park management, the same paradox applies: these are genuinely lethal animals, but the statistical risk they pose to guided visitors is lower than media coverage often implies.

This article uses the Jessop 2020 framework to examine both dimensions: the ecological science behind Komodo dragon predation, and the documented record of human encounters with these animals — who faces risk, how much, and what the park does to manage it.

Background: Public Perception of Risk

Public perception of Komodo dragon danger is systematically inflated relative to documented attack statistics. Although the species possesses genuine offensive capability — serrated teeth, confirmed venom, and exceptional sensory tracking — fatal attacks on humans are extremely rare; the scientific literature records fewer than 30 documented attacks over the past century, with the majority resulting from violations of established safety protocols rather than unprovoked predation.

Few animals in the world generate the same mixture of genuine scientific fascination and public fear as the Komodo dragon. At up to three metres in length and 90 kilograms, this is not a creature whose danger is imaginary. It possesses a powerful serrated bite, confirmed venom glands that induce hypotension and anticoagulation, and sensory capabilities — particularly its forked tongue sampling chemical traces across hundreds of metres — that make it a formidable stalking predator. Documentaries have broadcast footage of dragons ambushing and killing water buffalo ten times their weight. News coverage of attacks on children, fishermen, and rangers has periodically alarmed the Indonesian and international press.

The result is a perception of risk that is systematically inflated for tourists while simultaneously undercalibrated for the communities who actually live alongside these animals. For a visitor watching a large dragon amble toward them on a Komodo beach, the intuitive danger feels immediate and absolute. For a child playing near the edge of Komodo Village at dusk, the risk is real but rarely perceived as such because familiarity dulls alertness. Getting the risk profile right matters: overcautious tourism management reduces economic benefit to local communities, while undercautious management endangers visitors, guides, and the long-term social licence for dragon conservation.

The Jessop et al. (2020) work provides exactly the kind of quantitative ecological baseline that allows a calibrated risk assessment. By establishing what Komodo dragons actually do to prey populations across the park — rather than relying on anecdote or extrapolation from mammalian predator models — it allows us to understand the dragon's predatory behaviour, energy requirements, and hunting frequency in ways that directly inform human safety frameworks.

Methods: Attack Database and Ecological Data Compilation

The Jessop et al. (2020) research team employed a multi-source data synthesis approach. For the primary ecological question — whether dragon predation regulates prey populations — they drew on long-term monitoring data from ten localities across Komodo National Park collected between 2003 and 2013. This included:

• Population biomass surveys of Komodo dragons and their primary large mammal prey (Rusa deer, Rusa timorensis, and wild pig, Sus scrofa) using distance sampling and transect methods.
• Metabolic rate measurements drawing on published field metabolic rates for ectothermic and endothermic predators, allowing cross-species comparison of energy demands per unit body mass.
• Population energy use modelling integrating biomass density with metabolic rate to estimate how much prey energy the dragon population consumed across the park's islands.
• Prey population growth rate analysis examining whether temporal and spatial variation in dragon predation pressure corresponded to variation in deer or pig population dynamics.

For the human encounter context — the human-safety dimension addressed in the companion Bulletin piece and in the broader literature they situate their work within — researchers and park managers have separately maintained incident records. The most comprehensive dataset for Komodo National Park documents 24 recorded attacks on people between 1974 and 2012, a 38-year span, drawn from park authority records. These records include details on victim identity (local resident, fisherman, tourist, park employee), incident location, severity, and outcome.

Together these two datasets allow the same analytical logic: just as dragon predation can be assessed in terms of prey killed per unit time relative to prey population size, dragon attacks on humans can be assessed relative to human exposure — visitor-days, resident-years — to produce a meaningful risk rate rather than a raw incident count.

Findings: Attack Frequency and Demographics

The primary ecological findings of Jessop et al. (2020) are clear: Komodo dragons do not function as ecological analogs of mammalian apex predators in terms of prey population regulation. Despite achieving population biomass densities that far exceed those of lions, leopards, or wolves per unit area, the low per capita metabolic rate of these ectotherms means they consume prey at a rate insufficient to drive population-level change in deer or pig numbers. Substantial temporal and spatial variation in dragon population energy use had no detectable relationship with prey population growth rates. The dragon is, in ecological jargon, a top-down force that does not cascade.

This finding has a direct implication for human safety reasoning: because Komodo dragons hunt infrequently and must invest significant energy in each hunt, attacks on humans are not routine encounters but are almost always attributable to specific triggering conditions. The park's human attack record bears this out.

Between 1974 and 2012, 24 attacks on people were recorded in or adjacent to Komodo National Park, resulting in 5 confirmed fatalities. This averages to fewer than one attack per year and less than one fatality every seven years across the entire 38-year period. The demographic breakdown of victims is instructive:

• Local residents (villagers from Komodo Village and surrounding settlements) accounted for the majority of attacks. These are people who live within or immediately adjacent to dragon habitat and may encounter animals in uncontrolled, unguided contexts — near gardens, at village edges, in buildings at night.
• Park employees and construction workers — rangers, maintenance staff, and later construction workers on infrastructure projects on Rinca Island — represent a second significant category. A ranger was attacked while working in his hut; a construction worker was bitten on Rinca Island in December 2020 while building resort infrastructure.
• Fishermen who landed on park islands outside designated areas, including the fatal 2009 attack on Muhamad Anwar, who fell from a tree gathering sugar apples and was attacked by two dragons on the ground below.
• Tourists who left designated trails or ignored ranger instructions make up only a small fraction of incidents. A Singaporean tourist was seriously injured in 2017 after ignoring warnings while photographing feeding dragons.

The pattern is consistent: controlled, guided encounters carry low risk; uncontrolled exposures at the human-dragon interface carry substantially higher risk.

Risk per Million Visitor-Days: A Comparative Frame

Raw incident counts are a poor basis for risk comparison across species and contexts. The appropriate metric is incidents per unit of human exposure — conventionally expressed as attacks per million visitor-days or fatalities per million visitor-hours of exposure. This framing allows Komodo dragon risk to be placed alongside other wildlife species that attract fear or media coverage.

Komodo National Park received approximately 36,000 visitors in 2009, growing to over 300,000 by 2024 and exceeding 432,000 in 2025. Taking a conservative midpoint average of roughly 150,000 visitors per year across the decade 2012–2022 — with an average park stay of roughly one to two days — and noting that the attack rate has remained in the low single digits annually, the implied attack rate for guided tourists is well under 1 incident per 100,000 visitor-days.

For comparison, risk benchmarks from other wildlife interactions offer context:

• Bear attacks in North America: approximately 1–2 fatalities per year across tens of millions of visitor-days in bear country; roughly 0.1 fatalities per million visitor-days in grizzly bear habitat.
• Shark attacks globally: the International Shark Attack File records approximately 5–10 unprovoked fatalities per year globally across many billions of ocean swimmer-hours; risk per individual beach visit is estimated at roughly 1 in 3.75 million per year.
• Venomous snake mortality: WHO estimates 81,000–138,000 global snakebite deaths annually from roughly 5 billion people at risk in endemic regions, placing per-capita annual risk at approximately 1.6–2.8 per 100,000 in high-risk rural areas — orders of magnitude higher than dragon attack risk for visitors.
• Hippopotamus attacks in sub-Saharan Africa: estimated 500+ human deaths per year from a wild population of roughly 130,000 animals encountered by millions of people in riparian zones — a per-encounter risk substantially exceeding that of a guided Komodo dragon visit.

None of these comparisons is exact — exposure patterns, victim behaviour, and ecological context differ substantially. But the broad picture is consistent: the Komodo dragon's risk to tourists who follow established protocols is low by the standards of dangerous wildlife globally, and media representations that position every park visit as a brush with death are not supported by the empirical record.

Vulnerable Populations

The risk distribution for Komodo dragon attacks is highly unequal. Guided tourists represent a small minority of attack victims despite constituting the majority of human exposure at the park. The communities bearing disproportionate risk are those whose lives intersect with dragon habitat outside the park's managed visitor infrastructure.

Komodo Village Residents

Komodo Village, located on Komodo Island itself, is home to several hundred residents who have coexisted with dragons for generations. Their traditional knowledge of dragon behaviour is substantial — elders can read the signs of an alert versus a resting dragon, know which paths to avoid at dusk, and understand the seasonal patterns of dragon hunger that correlate with prey scarcity in the dry season. Nevertheless, this familiarity can paradoxically reduce acute vigilance. Children playing near village edges, elderly individuals moving through gardens, and people sleeping in ground-level structures have all been attacked. The 2007 death of an eight-year-old boy named Mansur — attacked while relieving himself behind bushes during a football break — illustrates how ordinary, mundane activities at the wrong location become lethal encounters.

The cessation of supplemental feeding programs, which had historically concentrated dragons at feeding stations away from village areas, is widely reported to have increased the number of dragon-human interactions around settlements in the late 2000s. When food aggregation points were removed for conservation reasons, dragons dispersed back into their natural foraging ranges — which overlap with human settlement areas.

Fishermen and Seasonal Workers

The second high-risk group is fishermen who land on park islands for shelter, fresh water, or to dry nets. Komodo, Rinca, Gili Motang, and Nusa Kode are legally designated national park land and are not open to unguided access, but enforcement across a geographically complex archipelago is imperfect. Fishermen who overnight on these islands may camp in areas used by resting dragons, or encounter animals that have been attracted by fish scraps. The 2009 death of Muhamad Anwar — who fell from a sugar apple tree and was immediately attacked by two dragons below — is the most documented of these cases, but it is unlikely to be isolated.

Seasonal agricultural and construction workers on islands adjacent to the park face similar risk profiles: they may work in low-visibility vegetation where dragons rest during the heat of the day, or move through the landscape at dawn and dusk when dragons are most active.

Quick Facts

Category	Data
Paper title	"Deadly but not Dangerous: How Ecologically Effective are Komodo Dragons as an Apex Predator?"
Authors	Jessop, T.S.; Ariefiandy, A.; Forsyth, D.M.; Purwandana, D.; White, C.R.; Benu, Y.J.; Madsen, T.; Harlow, H.J.; Letnic, M.
Journal (plain-language summary)	Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 101(2): e01671 (2020)
Primary research DOI	10.1002/ecy.2970 (Ecology)
Summary DOI	10.1002/bes2.1671
Recorded attacks on humans (1974–2012)	24 total incidents
Confirmed fatalities (1974–2012)	5
Average annual attacks (1974–2012)	<1 per year
Park annual visitors (2025)	432,000+
Primary prey species	Rusa deer (Rusa timorensis), wild pig (Sus scrofa)
Dragon biomass vs. mammalian apex predators	5.75–231× higher per unit area
Prey population regulation	Not detected — dragons do not suppress deer or pig growth rates
Highest-risk visitor behaviour	Leaving designated trails without a ranger

Park Mitigation Strategies

Komodo National Park Authority has developed a layered set of protocols designed to separate human activity from dragon behaviour in space and time. These measures reflect decades of accumulated understanding about when and where attacks most commonly occur, and they encode the ecological understanding that Jessop et al. (2020) have now formalized: that dragons are individually dangerous but their predatory behaviour is predictable and manageable.

Mandatory Ranger Accompaniment

No visitor may enter Komodo dragon habitat on park islands without being accompanied by a licensed park ranger. Rangers are trained in dragon behaviour and carry a traditional forked-stick tool — a bifurcated wooden pole approximately 1.5 metres long — which is used to deflect approaching dragons and assert spatial control without harming the animal. This protocol dates back to the early years of organised tourism in the park and has proven consistently effective: virtually all serious tourist injuries have involved deviation from this requirement.

Trail Designation and Habitat Zoning

Walking routes on Komodo and Rinca Islands are mapped to avoid areas of highest dragon density, known resting sites, and movement corridors used by dragons during their peak activity periods in the early morning and late afternoon. Trails favour open terrain where both rangers and visitors have clear sightlines. Dense vegetation, dry creek beds (which dragons use as cool resting sites), and coastal areas near carrion sources are either avoided or traversed only with experienced guides who know local patterns.

Feeding Prohibition and Conditioning Management

A critical management decision — made in the early 2000s — was the elimination of the supplemental feeding programs that had previously been used to attract dragons for tourist observation. While feeding made dragons more visible and concentrated them in predictable locations, it also created food conditioning: animals that associated human presence with food rewards showed increased boldness and reduced flight distances from people. The cessation of feeding reversed this conditioning among resident dragon populations, though the transition period generated elevated encounters near settlements as dragons redistributed into their natural foraging ranges.

Visitor Capacity Limits

Following years of escalating visitor numbers — from 36,000 in 2009 to over 432,000 in 2025 — the park authority implemented a formal daily visitor cap of 1,000 people beginning April 2026. This limit is driven primarily by ecological carrying capacity concerns, including coral reef degradation and dragon behavioural disturbance, rather than direct safety considerations. However, lower densities of tourists in any given area reduce the probability of unguided or poorly supervised encounters, and reduce the noise and disturbance that can agitate normally passive dragons.

Community Safety Education

For Komodo Village residents and nearby fishermen, the park authority and conservation NGOs — including the Komodo Survival Program — have run periodic community outreach programs covering dragon behaviour, high-risk times and locations, and emergency procedures following an attack. These programs address the gap that formal ranger protocols cannot close: the risk that exists outside the managed visitor experience, in the daily lives of people who share land with these animals.

Implications for Tourism

The Jessop et al. (2020) finding that Komodo dragons do not regulate prey populations has direct implications for park tourism: it indicates that dragon feeding events are less frequent than the metabolic rates of mammalian predators of comparable size would predict, meaning visitors may wait long periods without witnessing active predation. It also reinforces that tourist infrastructure and food-scent management are the primary variables controlling human-dragon incident risk.

The Jessop et al. (2020) ecological framework has several concrete implications for how Komodo National Park should be understood by the tourism industry, tour operators, and individual visitors.

First, the finding that Komodo dragons do not regulate prey populations implies that their feeding events are less frequent than would be expected from a comparably sized mammalian predator. A male Komodo dragon may consume a large deer or pig only a handful of times per year, supplementing with smaller prey and carrion between major meals. This low hunting frequency means that the probability of a visitor witnessing an active predation event — let alone being targeted as prey — is low. The dragons visitors encounter on marked trails are more often in resting, thermoregulating, or patrol states than in active hunting mode.

Second, the metabolic basis of the dragon's low predation rate is relevant to visitor risk. Because dragons require relatively few calories, they are not perpetually hunting. A well-fed dragon in a prey-rich area is less likely to investigate or pursue humans than a hungry animal in a resource-poor season. Dry season visits (June–August), when watering holes concentrate prey and predators alike and food competition may be elevated, represent a somewhat different risk environment than wet season visits when prey is more dispersed and dragons less concentrated.

Third, the research underscores the importance of behavioural ecology in risk management. The reason ranger protocols work is not simply the presence of a human authority figure, but the specific use of the forked stick and slow, deliberate movement that communicates non-prey signals to the dragon. Dragons are ambush predators that respond to sudden movement, fleeing behaviour, and vulnerability cues. Visitors who remain calm, move slowly, and stay within the ranger's managed perimeter are communicating — in dragon sensory terms — that they are not prey animals. This is not merely reassuring rhetoric; it reflects the actual mechanics of Komodo dragon predatory decision-making.

For tour operators, the implication is that quality of guiding matters more than quantity of dragons visible. A brief, well-managed encounter with a resting dragon 10 metres away is ecologically and experientially richer — and far safer — than a close approach to a feeding animal engineered for dramatic photographs. The Jessop findings reinforce a shift in ecotourism philosophy: the dragon's value lies in understanding its ecology, not in engineering proximity.

Myths vs Facts

Common Myth	Evidence-Based Reality
Komodo dragons regularly kill tourists in the national park.	Attacks on tourists following ranger protocols are extremely rare. Over 38 years (1974–2012), only 24 incidents were recorded park-wide; most involved local residents, not guided visitors.
Komodo dragons are dominant apex predators that control prey populations like lions or wolves.	Jessop et al. (2020) demonstrate that despite high biomass densities, Komodo dragons do not regulate populations of Rusa deer or wild pigs — making them atypical apex predators.
All visitors to Komodo National Park face equal risk from dragon attacks.	Risk is strongly stratified by behaviour and location. Guided tourists on marked trails face very low risk. Unguided visitors, local residents, children, and solitary fishermen face substantially higher risk.
Komodo dragons actively hunt humans as primary prey.	Documented attacks are almost universally defensive, opportunistic, or linked to hunger. Dragons do not target humans as a primary food source and are capable of distinguishing familiar human activity from prey behaviour.
Dragon attacks are increasing because dragon populations are growing.	Dragon population trends in the park show local variation but not dramatic increase. The perceived uptick in incidents around 2007–2009 correlates with cessation of supplemental feeding programs, not population expansion.
Seeing a Komodo dragon running toward you means it is attacking.	Dragons often approach humans out of curiosity or food-scent investigation. A ranger using the forked stick and standing ground will typically redirect the approach. Running triggers chase reflexes; remaining calm does not.

Practical Takeaways for Visitors

For anyone planning a visit to Komodo National Park, the science discussed above translates into a clear set of practical principles:

1. Always use a licensed ranger guide. This is non-negotiable. Virtually all documented attacks on tourists involve deviation from this requirement. The forked stick is not decorative; it is the primary safety tool for redirecting approaching dragons.
2. Stay on designated trails. Trail routes are mapped to avoid high-risk dragon concentration areas, resting sites, and low-visibility terrain. Stepping off the trail into dense vegetation or dry creek beds dramatically changes your risk exposure.
3. Maintain a minimum distance of 3–5 metres from any dragon. This gives the animal space to move without feeling cornered, and gives the ranger time to intervene if behaviour changes.
4. Do not run. Flight behaviour is one of the most reliable triggers of predatory pursuit in all ambush predators. Walk slowly and deliberately if asked to move away from a dragon.
5. Do not feed, provoke, or approach sleeping dragons. Resting dragons are not inert. They can react within a fraction of a second to close-range stimuli. Approaching a sleeping animal to photograph it at close range has led to multiple injuries.
6. Inform your guide of any relevant medical conditions, including active wounds, menstruation, or mobility limitations that might affect your ability to respond to ranger instructions quickly.
7. Choose reputable operators. Not all tour operators maintain the same guiding standards. Choose operators with licensed Park Authority guides — not simply local boat captains who may not have formal dragon safety training.
8. Visit during cooler morning hours where possible. Dragon activity peaks in mid-morning and late afternoon as they thermoregulate. Midday visits to shaded resting sites offer close observation of calmer, less active animals in many situations, though morning is generally optimal for active behaviour observation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "deadly but not dangerous" mean in the context of Komodo dragons?

The phrase is the title of a 2020 plain-language summary by Jessop et al. published in the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America (DOI: 10.1002/bes2.1671). "Deadly" refers to the Komodo dragon's proven capacity to kill large prey including deer and pigs. "Not dangerous" refers to an ecological finding: despite their lethal capability, Komodo dragons do not suppress or regulate the population growth of their prey species the way mammalian apex predators like lions or wolves do. The phrase simultaneously applies to human risk — dragons are individually capable of killing people, yet statistically pose very low danger to guided visitors.

How many people have been killed by Komodo dragons?

Park records document approximately 5 confirmed fatalities from Komodo dragon attacks between 1974 and 2012, out of 24 total recorded incidents over that 38-year period. Additional fatalities have occurred since 2012. The total documented death toll across the modern era of the national park numbers fewer than ten, representing an average of less than one fatality every six years across a park that now receives over 400,000 visitors annually.

Are Komodo dragon attacks increasing?

The data suggest a modest increase in reported incidents around 2007–2009, coinciding with the cessation of supplemental feeding programs that had previously concentrated dragons away from villages. However, given the simultaneous large increase in visitor numbers — from roughly 36,000 in 2009 to over 430,000 by 2025 — the rate of attacks per visitor has not increased proportionally, suggesting that guided protocols are effective.

Why don't Komodo dragons suppress deer and pig populations the way lions suppress wildebeest?

Jessop et al. (2020) attribute this to the fundamental metabolic difference between ectotherms and endotherms. Because Komodo dragons are cold-blooded, their per capita metabolic rate is far lower than comparably sized mammals. They require far fewer calories per kilogram of body weight, which means they hunt and kill infrequently. This low per capita predation rate, combined with high population densities, results in population-level energy requirements that simply do not generate enough lethal events to drive prey population growth down.

Who is most at risk from Komodo dragon attacks?

Risk is concentrated in specific groups: local villagers living within or adjacent to dragon habitat; fishermen who land on park islands outside designated areas; unaccompanied park employees or construction workers; and tourists who ignore ranger instructions or leave designated trails. Children and elderly individuals are particularly vulnerable if an attack does occur. Guided tourists who remain on marked paths with qualified rangers face very low statistical risk.

What safety measures does Komodo National Park require for visitors?

All visitors must be accompanied by a licensed park ranger carrying a forked defensive stick. Visitors must remain on designated trails, maintain a minimum distance of 3–5 metres from any dragon, avoid running, and follow the ranger's instructions at all times. Women who are menstruating are advised to inform their guide. Feeding dragons is strictly prohibited, as food conditioning increases aggression toward humans.

Sources & Further Reading

1. Jessop, T.S., Ariefiandy, A., Forsyth, D.M., Purwandana, D., White, C.R., Benu, Y.J., Madsen, T., Harlow, H.J., and Letnic, M. (2020). "Deadly but not Dangerous: How Ecologically Effective are Komodo Dragons as an Apex Predator?" Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 101(2): e01671. https://doi.org/10.1002/bes2.1671
2. Jessop, T.S., Ariefiandy, A., Forsyth, D.M., Purwandana, D., White, C.R., Benu, Y.J., Madsen, T., Harlow, H.J., and Letnic, M. (2020). "Komodo dragons are not ecological analogs of apex mammalian predators." Ecology, 101(4): e02970. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2970
3. Auffenberg, W. (1981). The Behavioral Ecology of the Komodo Monitor. University Presses of Florida. The foundational monograph on Komodo dragon field biology, predation, and ecology.
4. Fry, B.G., et al. (2009). "A central role for venom in predation by Varanus komodoensis (Komodo dragon) and the extinct giant Varanus (Megalania) priscus." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(22): 8969–8974. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0810883106
5. Purwandana, D., Ariefiandy, A., Imansyah, M.J., Seno, A., Ciofi, C., Letnic, M., and Jessop, T.S. (2014). "Ecological allometries and niche use dynamics across Komodo dragon ontogeny." The Science of Nature, 101(7): 613–622.
6. Ardiantiono, Affleck, D.L.R., Imansyah, M.J., Purwandana, D., Ariefiandy, A., Benu, Y.J., and Jessop, T.S. (2018). "Effects of human disturbance on the habitat use and behaviour of Komodo dragons." Oryx, 52(4): 726–733.
7. Goldstein, E.J.C., Tyrrell, K.L., Citron, D.M., Cox, C.R., Recchio, I.M., Okimoto, B., Bryja, J., and Fry, B.G. (2013). "Anaerobic and aerobic bacteriology of the saliva and gingiva of 16 captive Komodo dragons." Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine, 44(2): 262–266. https://doi.org/10.1638/2012-0022R1.1
8. Mongabay (2009). "Fisherman killed by two Komodo dragons." news.mongabay.com