Venomous Komodo dragons kill prey with wound-and-poison tactics

Not Exactly Rocket Science
By Ed Yong
May 19, 2009 2:00 AMNov 5, 2019 12:13 AM

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For the longest time, people believed that the world's largest lizard, the Komodo dragon, killed its prey with a dirty mouth. Strands of rotting flesh trapped in its teeth harbour thriving colonies of bacteria and when the dragon bites an animal, these microbes flood into the wound and eventually cause blood poisoning.

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