The Story Everyone Believed
For decades, the standard explanation for how a Komodo dragon kills went like this: the lizard bites its prey, and then it waits. The mouth, supposedly crawling with over fifty strains of dangerous bacteria, would infect the wound. The prey, a deer, a pig, occasionally a water buffalo, would weaken over days and eventually die, at which point the dragon would follow the scent trail and feed. It was a compelling story. It was also, in its most important detail, wrong.
