The Komodo dragon, the largest living lizard, carries venom glands in its lower jaw. The venom keeps blood from clotting and also lowers blood pressure. The gland is compound, which means that it is built of one large compartment and five smaller ones, and ducts from these open between the teeth.

The dragon is a kind of monitor lizard, and male Komodo dragons grow larger than females. The lower jaw opens unusually wide because of movable joints, and the stomach expands easily. A dragon can eat up to 80 percent of its own weight in one meal. Scientists now reject the old idea that bacteria in the mouth help the dragon hunt.

The teeth tell their own story. A Komodo dragon has about 60 short, serrated teeth, and it goes through four or five complete sets in a lifetime. It keeps up to five replacement teeth at each tooth position, and a new tooth forms about every 40 days. Komodo dragons are the only living land animals with backbones that have teeth that are serrated, curved and blade-shaped, a feature that scientists call true ziphodonty. One study of the skull found it lightweight and not built for a strong bite, yet very good at resisting a pulling load. Along with long claws and a big, strong tail, these teeth suit an animal that waits quietly in one spot for food to come by.

Young Komodo dragons live very differently from adults. A hatchling is green with yellow and black bands, and it climbs into the trees, where it eats mostly insects, small lizards and geckos, and its teeth are not yet the serrated kind that adults have. Adults turn dull brown or gray, and they live and hunt alone, eating deer as well as dead animals that they find. Both ages live in tropical savanna forests, and the adults rest in burrows at night.

Female Komodo dragons can reproduce without a male, in a process called parthenogenesis. Researchers used genetic fingerprinting to show that two zoo females kept away from males had produced offspring on their own. One of those females later produced offspring the usual way too, so females may switch between the two kinds of reproduction, depending on whether a mate is there. A female lays about 30 eggs, and they take about eight months to hatch. Some females use nest mounds that birds called megapodes built, and they often dig decoy nest chambers in addition to the real nest. Females do not breed every year, and they use rest years to recover.

As of 2021, only about 10 percent of the Komodo dragons on Flores lived inside a protected area, and rising sea levels could take away 30 to 70 percent of the Komodo dragon range by 2040. As of November 2026, the Komodo dragon is listed as endangered. As of 2021, it lived in eight subpopulations on six islands, and almost 70 percent of them were on Komodo and Rinca. Indonesia set up Komodo National Park in 1980, and the park covers about 700 square miles and has patrols that guard the dragons.

Words to know

• compound: made of parts
• ziphodonty: blade-shaped teeth
• parthenogenesis: birth without fertilization
• subpopulations: island groups