Oct 10, 2026, 6:30 PM

@dl2jml @coder In komodo dragons' case, it's a lot simpler: They're hungry and don't have kin recognition. Anything that's small enough to easily take out in a fight is food.

This isn't to say that komodo dragons are dumb in general - they're definitely not. They can count, recognize familiar individuals (though they don't have a concept of "kin", hence they'll readily eat their own children), they hunt strategically rather than rely on simple brute force, and they readily learn how to interact with humans. When they're small, they adapt to living in treetops and masking their own scent to avoid being eaten by their parents. They almost certainly outsmart both ostriches, koalas, cane toads and programmers!

But, well, there's the cannibalism. They'll eat their own kids because they're just prey to them! That seems like a pretty self-destructive impulse.

(This isn't universal to monitor lizards. Timor monitors, for example, only very rarely cannibalize each other, apparently only if they're starving. Nile monitors will lay eggs in termite mounds and return 8-9 months later to make an escape hole for the hatchlings (but provide no further parental care). But to a komodo dragon, one's own young are just food.).

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