WARNING! The following information can be a little gross! The Komodo dragon can kill anything from a rat to a water buffalo. Weighing up to 350 pounds, it can eat about 100 pounds of meat (which to you is about 400 hamburgers) in just a few minutes. Many times, a Komodo will feed on animals that are already dead. This means it has very stinky breath and a lot of nasty bacteria inside its mouth. If the Komodo bites an animal and doesn’t kill it, the animal will get an infection from that dangerous bacteria and die soon anyway. A Komodo dragon can smell a dead animal up to 2 1/2 miles away, so it can track the animal down, and it becomes another meal. Although by the time it reaches its kill, it may have to share with other Komodo dragons that have sniffed out the prey, as well. The Komodo wastes very little of the prey it catches. Its skull is flexible, and it can expand its throat to eat large chunks of its meal—including hooves and bones.
Because of illegal hunting and habitat loss due to human settlement, there are only about 5,000 komodo dragons left, making them an endangered species.