Spittle poisoning bison, is this true of the Kokomo giant lizard?

At the beginning of the 20th century, on a small island 200 nautical miles east of Bali, a group of prisoners who were serving their sentences found an appalling unknown creature on the island, whose body was as big as a crocodile, but could run fast on the dry land. More frightening is that this creature is extremely ferocious also has strong aggressive, not only will and similar kill each other, but even humans and carrion never let go, so the prison guards rushed to report the incident to the leadership, but prison leaders in the face of such statements do not believe but also questioned whether the inmates are drugged.

It was only in 1911 that an American pilot in a small plane passing by the island inadvertently also found a mysterious creature that looked like a dinosaur, which ran wild on the island and attacked bison and wild boars, and then made this sighting public, which convinced people of the real existence of this creature. With curiosity, several biological experts from the Netherlands later landed on the island specifically and conducted the first inspection of the creatures on the island. They found that the creature was huge, much like a giant lizard that had never been seen before, and although it was a lizard, it also seemed to have a close relationship with dinosaurs, so they named the unknown island "Kokomo Island", and the giant lizard found on this island was named "Kokomo Dragon".

Kokomo dragon is the largest lizard under the genus Megalomaniacs and Megalomaniacs, also known as Kokomo giant lizard. Although it is considered to be a relative of a dinosaur, the actual size of the Kokomo giant lizard is not as huge as imagined. The adult Kokomo lizard is black-brown in color, with thick armored scales all over its body, short and stout limbs with hard nails, and generally weighs less than 100 kilograms, with a body length of no more than 3 meters, of which the tail occupies one-half of the body length, comparable to small and medium-sized crocodiles. The huge creatures seen in documentaries are usually well-fed and well-fed "fatty" in Kokomo Park, which looks extraordinarily bloated and huge because of its amazing food intake, which can eat about 80% of its body weight at once.

As a cold-blooded animal, the Kokomo lizard, like most snakes, usually likes to live in a dry and hot environment. Because of the huge amount of food and the absence of other large carnivores on the island, the Kokomo lizards dominate here, and they will eat almost everything they can find on the island, such as wild boar, bison, elk, monkeys, snakes, and even the hatch lings and carrion of their kind, as long as they are found, they will not let go. Only after 8-10 months of adulthood do they come down to the ground.

When hunting, the Kokomo lizard will approach its prey quietly like a crocodile, then sprint at a speed of 20 km per hour to pounce on them and quickly bite their necks until they suffocate. However, this hunting method usually can only deal with small animals, in the face of prey several times its size does not play a role, because the bite force, its strength is far less than the crocodile, unlike the crocodile will die roll, plus they like to go alone, never teamwork, so their strength alone is unable to hunt large animals. So the question arises, since the bite force can not, and will not team hunting, how they do can hunt and kill wild boar and bison, these large animals?

I believe that many people believe that the Kokomo lizard contains a lot of bacteria in its mouth, even if it does not rely on the bite force, a mouthful of spittle can also be used to poison the bison directly. It will be like a viper injecting venom when hunting, and it will let the saliva mix into the wound after biting the prey, and the prey will bleed more and more until it dies of infection soon afterward is the reason why they are really scary, but is it really so? Before answering this question, let's first understand the origin of the Kokomo lizard "bacteria," the reason why many people feel that its saliva contains bacteria is from a documentary broadcast in earlier years.

The Kokomo lizard in the documentary attacked a resting bison and bit it on the ankle, then the wound became infected and hard to heal, and eventually died after 36 hours. Subsequently, researchers extracted at least 60 kinds of deadly bacteria from the injured part of the bison, so they concluded that the Kokomo lizard likes to eat carrion and has very poor oral hygiene, so its saliva contains a lot of bacteria, and the bison was infected by the bacteria in its saliva and died. So whenever people mention the Kokomo lizard, they always unconsciously associate the virus with the bacteria, as if it was born to be a pathogen carrying a lot of bacteria, but this misunderstanding that lasted for nearly a century was finally confirmed in 2011.

In a documentary called "The Kiss of Death" published in 2011, another researcher solved the mystery of the bison that gradually died of infection after being bitten by a Kokomo giant lizard. This time they directly extracted the Kokomo lizard's saliva samples, but in this saliva did not find any bacteria or viruses, on the contrary, its mouth is also particularly clean, and other carnivorous animals BO differ have nice, so the Kokomo lizard does have not to like to brush their teeth is just a rumor. The reason why a large number of bacteria and viruses could be extracted from the wound of that bison at that time was not from the saliva of the Kokomo lizard but rotten and muddy puddle.

As we all know, wild animals usually move around water sources, especially bison and wild pigs like to roll in mud puddles to ward off mosquitoes and insects, so even if they are not bitten by Kokomo lizards, their wounds will be infected with bacteria for a long time in the mud puddles, which often happens in Kokomo Island, and every year many animals die of injuries and infections, so saliva with bacteria has been the biggest human misconception about Kokomo lizards. This is why bacteria in saliva have been the biggest misunderstanding of the Kokomo lizard by humans. But this does not mean that the bite of the Kokomo lizard will be safe, not to mention its more than 60 huge teeth of up to 2.5 cm in length, and people have found several well-developed poison glands in its lower jaw.

The Kokomo lizard uses its venom when attacking larger prey, but this venom is greatly reduced compared to most venomous snakes, and some bison even take a week to fall after being bitten by the Kokomo lizard. This shows that its venom does not effectively kill the prey, but usually can only cause blood flow, severe pain and numb the muscles, plus the harsh field environment wound is difficult to heal, and in the long run, there are always some poor health will be infected until death, and then the Kokomo lizard with a keen sense of smell to gnaw, so this is the main reason why it can prey on large animals.