November 22, 2007
IF you ate frozen rats, small rabbits, large fish and pigs, you'd put on weight too.
Tuka, Taronga Zoo's 2.7m komodo dragon, weighed in at 87kg on his annual visit to the animal scales yesterday - an increase of 9kg since this time last year.
It's an impressive gain for a reptile who only eats once a fortnight during winter.
"Unlike most people who start calorie-counting as soon as the weather heats up, during the warmer months Tuka eats more regularly as he becomes more active and needs the extra food to fuel his activities," Taronga's senior reptile keeper Michael McFadden said.
Tuka, 25, has been a Sydney resident since 1991 but hails originally from the Indonesian island of Flores, where his penchant for village goats, pigs and water buffalo got him into trouble with locals.
The Zoo transported him from Rangunan Zoo in Jakarta more than 15 years ago.
He's both feisty and lazy, according his keepers.
"Tuka is a very intelligent lizard, so to keep him on his toes we often hide his food under the edges of logs and through the plants in his exhibit to give him something to find during the day," Mr McFadden said.
"As he is quite a lazy lizard, hiding the food ensures that he gets some incidental exercise as he hunts and forages."
Tuka is also important for the survival of his endangered species.
Found on just a handful of Indonesian islands, only 3000 of the world's largest land lizards remain in the wild, struggling with a lack of food, tourism and habitat loss.
caption: Moment of truth ... if you ate frozen rats, small rabbits, large fish and pigs, you'd put on weight too. So it's no surprise Taronga Zoo's 2.7m komodo dragon has gained 9kg. Picture: Troy Bendeich
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IF you ate frozen rats, small rabbits, large fish and pigs, you'd put on weight too.
Tuka, Taronga Zoo's 2.7m komodo dragon, weighed in at 87kg on his annual visit to the animal scales yesterday - an increase of 9kg since this time last year.
It's an impressive gain for a reptile who only eats once a fortnight during winter.
"Unlike most people who start calorie-counting as soon as the weather heats up, during the warmer months Tuka eats more regularly as he becomes more active and needs the extra food to fuel his activities," Taronga's senior reptile keeper Michael McFadden said.
Tuka, 25, has been a Sydney resident since 1991 but hails originally from the Indonesian island of Flores, where his penchant for village goats, pigs and water buffalo got him into trouble with locals.
The Zoo transported him from Rangunan Zoo in Jakarta more than 15 years ago.
He's both feisty and lazy, according his keepers.
"Tuka is a very intelligent lizard, so to keep him on his toes we often hide his food under the edges of logs and through the plants in his exhibit to give him something to find during the day," Mr McFadden said.
"As he is quite a lazy lizard, hiding the food ensures that he gets some incidental exercise as he hunts and forages."
Tuka is also important for the survival of his endangered species.
Found on just a handful of Indonesian islands, only 3000 of the world's largest land lizards remain in the wild, struggling with a lack of food, tourism and habitat loss.
caption: Moment of truth ... if you ate frozen rats, small rabbits, large fish and pigs, you'd put on weight too. So it's no surprise Taronga Zoo's 2.7m komodo dragon has gained 9kg. Picture: Troy Bendeich
[dohtml]<span class="sidenote" title="
"></span>[/dohtml]