Komodo Dragon - Blog Posts
Hai noobs #firstpost
Another Artfight attack, probably my last one for the year (unless I get something done quickly today)
This has been one of the biggest pieces I have ever made, it took me anywhere between 22 and 32 hours over the course of the last two and a half weeks. There were a lot of things happening in between working on this which is why I’m not entirely sure about the time. The full timelapse video is 16 minutes long. I’m really glad I pivoted from trying to make this into a comic, I don’t know that I would’ve finished it if I had. This is one of the only pieces with full shading I did this artfight, I didn’t draw in a light source but I really tried to work off of one. Even though I had a reference photo for the sketch, a lot of these poses were new to me and some were difficult to figure out (a couple of legs are missing, and one of the mugs are weird)
Overall I wanted to draw a bunch of pirates (loosely inspired by a scene in Bloody Cape) and that’s what I did and I’m pretty pleased with how this turned out
Solevi ‘Levi’ Starlance belongs to tieflingcxre, @tieflingcxre on here
W.H. belongs to fuzzheadlola
Luciana Requin-Tiburón belongs to LeafyLilac, @leafy-lilac on here
Rina belongs to hamjoe
Tempest and Callisto belong to CaptainHarrie, @diosmaden on here
Leandro Acosta belongs to Teeb, @tinta--branca--art on here
Elaine Sherwood belongs to AmyIssen, @amy-issen on here
Therasia belongs to kaeri, @glitterrgalax on here
Green belongs to 7lizardsinacoat, @7lizardsinacoat on here
Arlo belongs to 8regrets
Timelapse under the cut
This is literally so cool, I love komodos- :3
Komodo dragons have iron-tipped teeth, new study shows
Komodo dragons, the world’s largest species of lizard, have iron-tipped teeth that help them to rip their prey apart, according to new research. The metal is concentrated in the cutting edge and tips of their curved, serrated teeth, staining them orange, scientists wrote in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Komodo dragons are native to Indonesia and weigh around 80 kilograms (176 pounds) on average. They eat almost any kind of meat and are known as deadly predators...
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/science/komodo-dragons-iron-teeth-scli-intl/index.html
More animal pics from the Toledo Zoo and Aquarium! Also, more than 10! 😆
So, I went to the Toledo Zoo and Aquarium yesterday! I got a bunch of cute pics! These are 10 of like...17? 20? Dunno, lol, cause ANIMALS!!!
Introducing the cast of EyEs!
Each character has their own story and how they got their parasites (not including the three who dont)
Along with this I am announcing this as an open ask blog to ask about the characters or anything else
I will be making future posts going into more detail about the groups and the characters themselves
Here’s today’s badass animal, the Komodo Dragon! These things are f*cking scary!!! But also somehow majestic and awe-inspiring.
Komodo dragon, Indonesia by Bryn Pinzgauer
Joan Beauchamp Procter: her best friend was a Komodo dragon and if that doesn’t entice you to read this, I don’t know what will
Joan Beauchamp Procter is a scientist every reptile enthusiast should admire.
Joan was an incredibly intelligent young woman who was chronically ill (and as a result of her chronic illness, physically disabled by her early thirties). Her health issues kept her from going to college, but that did not stop her from studying and keeping reptiles. She presented her first paper to the Zoological Society of London at the tender age of nineteen, and the society was so impressed that they hired her to help design their aquarium. In 1923, despite having no formal secondary education and despite being only 26 years old, she was hired as the London Zoo’s curator of reptiles. Now, that in and of itself is an awesome accomplishment, but Joan was absolutely not content to maintain the status quo. Nosiree, by the age of 26 Joan had already kept many exotic pets (including a crocodile!) and knew a thing or two about what needed to be done to improve their lives in captivity. So Joan got together with an architect, Edward Guy Dawber, and designed the world’s first building designed solely for the keeping of reptiles. She had some really, really great ideas. Her first big idea was to make the building differentially heated- different areas and enclosures would have different heat zones, instead of having the whole building heated to one warm temperature. She also set up aquarium lighting- the gallery itself was dark, with dim lights on individual enclosures to make things less stressful for the inhabitants. She also insisted on the use of special glass that didn’t filter out UVB. This meant that reptiles could synthesize vitamin D and prevented cases of MBD in her charges.
But advances in enclosure design weren’t Joan’s only contribution to reptile keeping. She was also one of the first herpetologists to study albinism in snakes- she was the first to publish an identification how albinism manifests in reptile eyes differently than in mammal eyes, and stressed the importance of making accurate color plates of reptiles during life because study specimens often lose pigmentation. She also was really hands-on with many species, including crocodiles, large constrictors, and monitor lizards. Joan had this idea that if you socialize an animal and get it used to handling, then when you need to give it a vet checkup, things tend to go a lot better. This really hadn’t been done with reptiles before. She was able to identify many unstudied diseases, thanks to her patient handling of live specimens, and by being patient and going slow, she managed to get a lot of very large, dangerous creatures to trust her. One of them (that we know of) even came to like her- a Komodo dragon named Sumbawa.
In 1928, two of the first Komodo dragons to be imported to Europe arrived at the London Zoo. One of them, named Sumbawa, came in with a nasty mouth infection. His first several months at the zoo were a steady stream of antibiotics and gentle care, and by the time he’d recovered enough for display, he had come to be tolerant of handling and human interaction. In particular, he seemed to be genuinely fond of Joan. She was their primary caretaker and wrote many of the first popular accounts of Komodo dragon behavior in captivity. While recognizing their lethal capacity, she also wrote about how smart they are and how inquisitive they could be. In her account published in The Wonders of Animal Life, she said that "they could no doubt kill one if they wished, or give a terrible bite" but also that they were “as tame as dogs and even seem to show affection.” To demonstrate this, she would take Sumbawa around on a leash and let zoo visitors interact with him. She would also hand-feed Sumbawa- pigeons and chickens were noted to be favorite food, as were eggs.
Joan died in 1931 at the age of 34. By that time she was Doctor Procter, as the University of Chicago had awarded her an honorary doctorate. Until her death, she still remained active with the Zoological Society of London- and she was still in charge of her beloved reptiles. Towards the end of her life, Joan needed a wheelchair. But that didn’t stop her from hanging out with her giant lizard friend. Sumbawa would walk out in front of the wheelchair or beside it, still on leash- she’d steer him by touching his tail. At her death, she was one of the best-known and respected herpetologists in the world, and her innovative techniques helped shape the future of reptile care.
Antibiotic resistance is one of the most pressing problems of our times. Traditional antimicrobial drugs aren’t working the way they used to, and the rise of “superbugs” could bring about the post-antibiotic age, where easily treatable infections suddenly become life-threatening incurable illnesses.
There have been a slew of new discoveries recently that have revealed brand new ways to turn the tide, but the latest revelation at the hands of a team from George Mason University is a particularly unusual sounding one. As it turns out, we could use the blood of dragons to annihilate superbugs.
No, this isn’t an analogy or a plot line from Game of Thrones. The devil-toothed Komodo dragon – the devious beast from Indonesia – has a particular suite of chemical compounds in its blood that’s pure anathema to a wide range of bacteria.
They’re known as CAMPs – cationic antimicrobial peptides – and although plenty of living creatures (including humans) have versions of these, Komodo dragons have 48, with 47 of them being powerfully antimicrobial. The team managed to cleverly isolate these CAMPs in a laboratory by using electrically-charged hydrogels – strange, aerated substances – to suck them out of the dragons’ blood samples.
Synthesizing their own versions of eight of these CAMPs, they put them up against two strains of lab-grown “superbugs,” MRSA and Pseudomona aeruginosa, to see if they had any effect. Remarkably, all eight were able to kill the latter, whereas seven of them destroyed all trace of both, doing something that plenty of conventional antibiotic drugs couldn’t.
Writing in the Journal of Proteome Research, the researchers write that these powerful CAMPs explain why Komodo dragons are able to contain such a dense, biodiverse population of incredibly dangerous bacteria in their mouths. Although it’s not clear where all these bacteria originally came from, the chemical compounds in their blood ensures that they’ll never be properly infected.
In fact, it was this ability to co-exist with such lethal bacteria that piqued the interest of the researchers in the first place.
“Komodo dragon serum has been demonstrated to have in vitro antibacterial properties,” they note. “The role that CAMPs play in the innate immunity of the Komodo dragon is potentially very informative, and the newly identified Komodo dragon CAMPs may lend themselves to the development of new antimicrobial therapeutics.”
It’ll be awhile before these CAMPs are tested in human trials, but the idea that we’re effectively using dragon’s blood, or plasma, to fight against resurgent diseases is genuinely quite thrilling. Alongside Hulk-like drugs that physically rip bacteria apart, there’s a chance that, with the help of these legendary lizards, we may win this war yet.
Komodo dragons have iron-tipped teeth, new study shows
Komodo dragons, the world’s largest species of lizard, have iron-tipped teeth that help them to rip their prey apart, according to new research. The metal is concentrated in the cutting edge and tips of their curved, serrated teeth, staining them orange, scientists wrote in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Komodo dragons are native to Indonesia and weigh around 80 kilograms (176 pounds) on average. They eat almost any kind of meat and are known as deadly predators...
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/science/komodo-dragons-iron-teeth-scli-intl/index.html