Word: komodo
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...Philadelphia, the city zoo acquired two Komodo lizards from the Dutch East Indies, tried to feed them raw hamburger, found they would eat only eggs. The keepers forthwith filled empty eggshells with raw hamburger, fed them to the dragon-lizards, found they didn't know the difference...
Having brought back alive three Komodo dragons from the Dutch East Indies (TIME, May 21, 1934), two young Harvardmen and amateur naturalists. William Harvest Harkness Jr. of Manhattan and Lawrence T. K. Griswold of Quincy, Mass., set out in the autumn of 1934 after still rarer game-the giant panda of western China. No white man had ever seen this curious creature until a French missionary chanced on one in the late 19th Century. First white men to shoot one were Theodore Jr. and Kermit Roosevelt, in 1929. No giant panda had ever been brought out alive...
Scientists who were told of these beasts 25 years ago laughed lightly, assured tale-bearers that such things had not walked the earth since Eocene times. Natives who passed Komodo described something which sounded like a dragon. Everyone knew that dragons were as mythological as the Minotaur. But the tales kept coming and in 1912 Major P. W. Ouwens of Java's Buitzenborg Zoo dispatched collectors to Komodo. They brought back creatures which not only closely resembled an Eocene reptile but were also almost exact replicas of the St. George dragon. Zoologist Ouwens named the new species Varanns komodoensis...
...lizards have since been found on a few neighboring islands, but most are on Komodo. Komodo is a volcanic island 22 mi. long and 12 mi. wide, covered with bleak, crumbling mountains, grassy plains, thick jungle. Besides dragon lizards it supports many a deer, boar, water buffalo, bird, snake, insect and a miserable Dutch penal colony. The lizards claw out great caves in the mountains, roam down to prey on deer, boar and smaller animals. They walk with bodies well off the ground, can run fast, swim, stand on their hind legs like dinosaurs. They are keen-eyed, keen-eared...
Until last month there were only four live Komodo lizards in captivity, two in London, one in Amsterdam, one in Berlin. In 1926 Naturalist Douglas Burden brought two to Bronx Zoo, but they pined away in 40 days. Last week's arrivals were escorted by two young Harvardmen, Lawrence Tarleton Knutsford Griswold and William Harvest Harkness, who captured 43 lizards on Komodo in box traps baited with deer carcasses. They loosed all but eight, gave four by agreement to Java's Sourabaya Zoo. One of the remaining four died of seasickness...