
Komodo Island Is Closing to Tourists Because People Are Stealing Dragons - jonbaer
https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/indonesia-closing-island-protecting-endangered-komodo-dragons
======
Defenestresque
As a bit of an aside, I posted a comment [0] on Reddit when this was posted
yesterday. It links to a gallery with a lot of interesting info about Komodo
dragons. Like me, you probably have at least a few false beliefs about Komodo
dragons (such as the fact that they are slow scavengers, or that they are
venomous or use bacteria to poison animals before waiting for them to die).

Anyone curious should check out this amazing gallery of pics/videos and
captions that really blew my mind and totally changed my perception of this
fearsome lizard!

[0]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/b8joz9/komodo_island_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/b8joz9/komodo_island_is_reportedly_closing_until_2020/ejyd1uu/)

[1] [https://imgur.com/gallery/RUeB9](https://imgur.com/gallery/RUeB9)
(credit: theitinerantnaturalist on imgur)

~~~
justaguyhere
There was a video on /r/natureismetal, I watched about 10 seconds before fast
forwarding - bunch of dragons munching on a deer, while it is _still alive_ :(

These are scary animals! They do look cool though

~~~
Defenestresque
Oh yeah, that's this one [0] I believe. I just realized its age-restricted.
Definitely NSFW/L!

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPBiLXp5Uj8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPBiLXp5Uj8)

~~~
koboll
As horrific as that video is, it leaves me with so many questions. How did the
deer stay alive so long? Why didn't it scream / fight more? What caused it to
kick into survival mode right at the end, seconds before death?

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philwelch
Are they poaching the dragons or stealing them while they're still alive?
Usually you'd say "poaching" or "illegally hunting" or something if that's
what it was, but stealing a live Komodo dragon sounds like a foolhardy
endeavor.

~~~
devoply
> The lizards were selling for about $35,000 (500 million rupiah) each.

Sounds to me like they should be farming these things. 100 animals is 3.5
million. Not a bad way to make money.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Cool! They should farm pandas and rhinos as well. Extinction would be solved
overnight!

~~~
pawelmurias
Rhinos are being farmed already. You can regularly trim the horns of you rhino
herd in edition to selling the rhinos themselves.

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4ntonius8lock
Would it not make sense to instead of restrict all extraction put a number <
what is extract up for sale each year at an exorbitant price in a highly
regulated market?

Then you can fund conservation. It would create an economic incentive for
protection, since all parties would want to keep the cash cow alive (instead
of this being more of a PR issue, which is how conservation is treated)

In the US, much of national conservation came from hunting. Bullet taxes pay
for it.

It's a shame conversations about cold hard realities are driven by ideals and
feelings and not trade offs.

~~~
aphextron
This is exactly how African game reserves work. It’s a fantastic system which
provides life changing income to the locals, ensures a large thriving
population of animals through conservation funding, cuts down on poaching, and
lets trophy hunters partake in their sport legally and ethically. Yet Western
animal rights activists lose their minds when Cecil the Lion is killed because
they grew up watching Disney movies and have no conception of reality when it
comes to conservation. In a perfect world of course we would want to provide
funds to protect these animals without the need for killing. But the simple
fact is that without managing them like a natural renewable resource akin to
forestry, they simply would not exist. The number one way to ensure the
survival of an animal species is to make its’ existence financially viable.

~~~
4ntonius8lock
Like with nuclear energy, we are stuck with bad options because most people
see two options with pros and cons and decide to ignore all cons of one
option, and all pros of another.

There is nothing without pros and cons. It's just a matter of picking your
poising. Most people don't want to think about that. So we get ruthless
manipulators to sway masses. The masses meanwhile are adamant about making
decisions and having a voice... while completely ignoring the reality out
there. They want decisions made from the vantage point of what they feel with
no real care about the real world consequences of what they choose.

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gravelc
That's very sad. Stayed in Flores and went to Komodo Island on my honeymoon.
The dragons are amazing and was fortunate enough to see fully-grown males have
a battle for dominance.

The ranger's carry a long branch with a fork in it to defend themselves (by
catching the dragon's neck in the fork). Dragons are smart enough to catch
things like goats, so they are a danger to adult humans - more by sneaking up
rather than a frontal attack.

Wouldn't be too much of a challenge to take one unfortunately. They're usually
quite hungry (lots of them hang around the rangers' hut waiting to be fed), so
setting a trap with a piece of meat in it would work with little danger to the
operator if they were careful.

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ocfnash
Just recently I learned that Komodo dragons have the unusual feature of being
able to reproduce via parthenogenesis. This means that a female dragon, can
become pregnant spontaneously!

Apparently the cell which grows into the baby dragon is formed from an
ordinary egg cell that duplicates each of its chromosomes rather than having a
second set of chromosomes provided by a male sperm cell, as in sexual
reproduction. It turns out that the Komodo sex determination system means the
offspring are always male.

I believe this means that the offspring are thus completely homozygous, though
not clones of their mother because the egg chromosomes were formed by the
usual meiosis. Even more amazing (I think) is that there are apparently some
boa snakes which can also reproduce via parthenogenesis but whose sex
determination system makes all offspring female. IIUC, if any of these
daughters were also to reproduce via parthenogenesis, then their offspring
would indeed be clones of their mothers. A sort of genetic end point.

~~~
mikorym
This occurs in other snake species as well, the documentation is not always
complete, but there is evidence for adders and pythons.

> It turns out that the Komodo sex determination system means the offspring
> are always male.

Do you mean when it is _not_ parthenogenenis? How does this work?

EDIT: these are some of the snakes that I think it has been (partially)
documented for:

Copperhead

Fur de Lance

Some types of rattlesnakes

Burmese Pythons

Reticulated Pythons

~~~
ocfnash
>> It turns out that the Komodo sex determination system means the offspring
are always male.

> Do you mean when it is _not_ parthenogenenis? How does this work?

I mean all Komodo offspring produced by parthenogenenis are male even though
offspring from usual sexual reproduction in Komodos can be either gender. The
reason is that the Komodo sex determination system is logically opposite to
that of mammals. Specifically, whereas in mammals, a pair of homologous sex
chromosomes XX, produces a female, in Komodos this produces a male, ZZ.
(Parthenogenenis means there is also the possibility of Komodo WW embryo but
these are not viable.)

Happy to hear someone else thinks this is interesting.

~~~
mikorym
Ah, so it is the same symbols as with birds.

So that means that the female will have ZW, but it would double its Z_1 and
give its offspring Z_1Z_1?

------
IndonesiaBased
The Director Gerneral of Nature Conservationa and Ecosystems, of the Ministry
of Conservation and Forestry Mr Wiratno has announced in an official statement
that te rumors of closing Komodo are not true.

#Komodoisopen [https://wickeddiving.com/2019/04/komodo-is-
open/](https://wickeddiving.com/2019/04/komodo-is-open/)

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TwoQ
People will not stop themselves when it comes to abusing and defiling nature.

This is true of the general populace and all of us. We might not be stealing
dragons, but bit by bit each of us contribute negatively.

Eventually we will have to police one-another, be it through Government or
through societal change and pressure.

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petre
What do they do with them? Keep them around as pets? Stuff them? Make
traditional Chinese meds out of them?

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joduplessis
Looks like the Jurassic Park movies were allegorical after all. Go figure.

------
BucketSort
Is this Reddit now?

~~~
lyxsus1
for a while now, yes

~~~
abyssin
Where can I find a place that feels more like it was here five years ago?

~~~
tekkk
Excellent question, I too think that the comment and perhaps post quality has
somewhat deteriorared. To me it's the inane comments that don't add anything
which bother me the most. And I don't want to start downvoting everyone for
doing that but still, I'd much rather read some deep and thought-provoking
observations than remarks such as "that's interesting" or even worse, puns.

But I guess this is what happens with all services when they start to get
"main-stream" and start to become diluted by the masses. Without sounding too
elitist, it's not all too terrible but you can see the difference between
older posts comments and new.

~~~
lyxsus1
What concerns me the most is a wave of people who don't like learning. It's
the best part of our jobs! People are complaining about new languages,
frameworks, platforms, features here more and more.

There's always at least 1 post hanging in a top that is about "You don't
really need X", which really says "If you're going to keep doing next 5 years
what you've been doing last 5 years, don't bother", which as I suspect some
read as "Relax, you don't need to bother about this tech, just memorise a few
sentences to sound smart if asked about".

It's HN. There's something new? Cool! You managed to serve 1000s users per
second from linode $20 node? Awesome! How? What tradeoffs you had to do and
where? You have a good idea on how to better make choices about your tech and
created some nice decision tree chart? Thank you. Hope it's on github, we'd
like to collaborate.

~~~
BucketSort
I can kind of understand though. Information overload. People feel inundated
with information, so they turn off.

------
skilled
Who needs dragons when you have the tech industry changing the World?

------
village-idiot
Another case of “this is why we can’t have nice things”.

~~~
james_s_tayler
At some point I think we just need to accept it. We can't have nice things.

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miguelrochefort
I stayed in Bali for a month, 2 weeks ago. I considered going to Komodo Island
but I thought I could go back later. Looks like I missed my chance.

~~~
IndonesiaBased
Miguel you haven't there is a lot op misscommunication here. Komodo National
Park is open!

The people of Flores went on had a meeting with Vice President after rumors
started about Komodo closing down, earlier this year. It is fake, it is not
true! Marta Muslin says after meeting Mr Jusaf Kala the Vice President of
Indonesia

[https://wickeddiving.com/2019/04/komodo-is-
open/](https://wickeddiving.com/2019/04/komodo-is-open/)

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vhold
Putting satellite communicating GPS tracking devices in Komodo dragons would
probably be one of the best ways to locate non-super villain headquarters.

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paulcole
Seems like putting the dragons on some type of block chain might be a possible
solution? Sounds like a fun weekend hack!

