Komodo Dragons

tags: Parrots the Universe and Everything, biogeography, lemurs, twig technology, conservation, endangered species, evolution, komodo dragons, kakapo, baiji, comedy, Douglas Adams, streaming video Douglas Adams was the best-selling British author and satirist who created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [DVD]. In this talk at UCSB recorded shortly before his tragic and untimely death, Adams shares hilarious accounts of some of the apparently absurd lifestyles of the world's creatures, and gleans from them extraordinary perceptions about the future of humanity.
Sure, when he gets big, this little guy will be one of the world's largest lizards, weighing in at 150 lbs and growing to length of up to 10 feet long. He'll be feared as a man eater, possessing a venomous bite that can be fatal. But right now he's just a little guy, and boy, is he cute! Komodo Dragons are the largest lizards on the planet, giving us just the tiniest taste of what the world must have been like in the age of dinosaurs. What they have in size, however, they lack in distribution: the range of the Komodo is the smallest of any of the world's large carnivores, consisting of only…