The young Komodo dragon is lighter than a lemon and shorter than a shoebox, but it may one day reach nearly three meters in length and 70 kilograms in weight, while it has sharp teeth and its poisonous spine.
Five endangered Komodo dragon babies have emerged from their eggs at a Spanish zoo, marking the first successful breeding of the world’s largest lizard in that country in a decade.
“This is a great achievement for all of us,” Milagros Robledo, head of the herpetology department at Bioparc Fuengirola Zoo in southern Spain, who describes herself as the “mother of dragons,” told Reuters on Tuesday.
The 13-year-old mother laid 12 eggs in August, five of which were selected and incubated over seven months.
“It was a great job, a lot of boredom, it took a long time, but it (in the end) gave us a lot of satisfaction,” Robledo said, adding that the babies represented a “hopeful future” for this species of animal.
The small Komodo dragon is lighter than a lemon and shorter than a shoebox, but it may one day reach nearly three meters in length and weigh 70 kilograms, while it has sharp teeth and a poisonous spine.
And in 2021, this type of reptile, which is native to four Indonesian islands, was included in the IUCN Red List.
Robledo said Komodo dragons that are released into the wild tend to migrate to the tops of trees and do not need maternal or paternal care. But when kept in captivity, they live in separate terrariums so veterinarians can monitor their growth before showing them to the public.
