Although the others managed to drive the lizard back into the jungle, the damage had been done. Within half an hour the young man bled to death before the eyes of his helpless father and brother.

This nightmarish story is not fiction; it happened in Indonesia a few decades ago. The killer was the world�s largest lizard, the Komodo monitor, alias the Komodo dragon. (It gets its name because it belongs to the group of lizards known as monitors and because it lives on the tiny Indonesian island of Komodo.) While its usual diet consists of animals rather than people, some large individuals do become dangerous to humans. Their victims have included European tourists as well as Indonesian villagers