Perhaps I'll Cool Off And Watch Dexter Next

[bloodyrosemccoy]

So I just watched possibly the creepiest nature show I have ever seen, barring that one special where David Attenborough told me all the ways wasps are the scariest fuckers on the planet.* This special was about Komodo dragons and how they hunt, and it also involved David Attenborough.

So they were all excited for this special because this time they were going to find out how the dragons hunt, unlike the last documentary they did where David just tossed a dead goat onto the beach and stood around hosting a nature show whilst roughly two million giant killer lizards tore a goat apart at his feet, and the basic message of the bit seemed to be “I’m David Attenborough, and I am standing in front of a feeding frenzy of KOMODO FUCKING DRAGONS.”**

This time, though, they locked him in the sound booth while the cameramen went off to see what dragons eat when badass naturalists aren’t around to toss them goat carcasses. And what they found out was that the dragons feast upon DREAD AND DESPAIR.

So the crew finds a water buffalo and sits around waiting for shit to happen, and they’re like “There is a lizard right there, shit should be happening, it literally just poked that buffalo in the side with its tongue,” but the buffalo and lizard both just look sort of bored.

Then, a bit later, the dragon lunges and chomps a chunk out of the buffalo, and the cameramen are like “FINALLY.” But the buffalo is all “OW WHAT THE FUCK, DRAGON?” and kicks the dragon, and the dragon backs off like, “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t think you were using that chunk of flesh, my bad,” and then for a while nothing happens. The dragon goes back to staring intently at the buffalo, the buffalo goes about his business and bleeds a bit, and the camera guys are like “… That was it?”

And then they notice the other dragons.

As the day goes on, more and more dragons just sort of meander over to the buffalo’s vicinity. The buffalo continues to do whatever it is buffalo do, possibly muttering under its breath about asshole lizards, and the dragons make themselves comfortable. And just stare.

And the next day they are still there, staring at the buffalo.

They stay through the next day. And the next.

And this goes on for days, with the buffalo being like “Dragons, you are giving me the creeps,” but the dragons just KEEP STARING. Then the buffalo starts looking like it feels a bit under the weather, and moves less and less each day. And each day the dragons get closer and closer, all the time just WATCHING him, until finally THREE WEEKS LATER the buffalo keels over as the venom from that initial dragon bite finally knocks him down so hard he can’t get up.

AND THEN GIANT LIZARDS RIP HIM APART.

And then, a couple hours after the buffalo falls, they’ve stripped him of all his flesh, and they transform from a ravening mass of scaly eating machines to a bunch of lizards that just kind of wander off into the jungle, looking as though the past three weeks of glaring at a buffalo until he died was no big deal.

All that is left are the cameramen, standing there questioning the beliefs they held that there was any goodness to be found in the universe.***

I was going to watch the next special on the DVD—probably about penguins, since it’s impossible to do any nature program without at least half an hour of penguins—but first I had to check my closet for Komodo dragons. Facehuggers I can handle, but Komodo dragons? They’re just SPOOKY.


*Alien fans probably know that the xenomorph's life cycle is loosely based on the life cycle of the family of Ichneumon wasps. Many of the species in this family lay their eggs inside of a spider so that when the larvae hatch, they can eat their way out. The myriad ways they do this, it turns out, are WAY GODDAMN SCARIER than getting assaulted by a facehugger and then having the resulting ugly critter slam through your ribcage like the Kool-Aid Man. The ways the wasps do it make John Hurt’s famous death scene look as peaceful as getting carried off by angels while you sleep.

**This was also the series boasting a scene with the message “I am David Attenborough, and I am standing next to a FUCKING VOLCANO, which is erupting, BECAUSE I CAN.” This was back when he was a spry middle-aged badass and could film on location with only moderate wheezing.

***No, seriously, they had a behind-the-scenes bit where clearly distraught cameramen are confessing that they feel like they have become the dark harbingers of death as they follow this buffalo around.

Comments

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

Picking nits here, but aren't komodos non-venomous? Isn't it just that their mouths are so dang dirty that the bacteria will kill you with a variety of like 37 different infections if you get so much as scratched?

And yes, that's incredibly gruesome. Makes total sense, but eeww!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Nope, they're venomous. This is something people are just discovering, but apparently they do have venom glands, and the stuff in them does quite venomy things, like prevent blood clotting and inducing shock and causing muscle spasms.

Although I am sure the bacteria don't help. Cats and humans aren't venomous, but you really don't want to get bitten by either species anyway.

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

Oh. That's..er..good then. Because they weren't scary enough.

(I need one of those oh noes! icons with the stick figure guys with their heads on fire, running back and forth, yanno?)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I do know the icon!

I stick with the Movie Sign one, myself.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty fond of this one for that purpose, myself.

[kindigo.livejournal.com]

You called?

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[bkwrrm-tx.livejournal.com]

o_O

/checks under bed for Komodo dragons/

/puts feet all the way under the sheet, *just in case*/

[kadharonon.livejournal.com]

I read this off to Ben and he wandered off to the internet and found clips of Komodo Dragons nomming a buffalo on the Discovery Channel website and oh god that was creepy.

Also apparently the cameramen got rather attached to the buffalo while filming it for 3 weeks.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

I've read interviews with nature show cameramen that say it's a horrible awful job sometimes because they're not supposed to intervene and just film things like the female arctic fox going through the ice and dying while she's hunting for food for her kits and mate, things like that.

Not a job I would EVER want. I'm way too softhearted around animals.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I love it when the animals themselves get other ideas, like the leopard seal who took a shine to a cameraman and was like O HAI NEW PALFRIEND, I BRUNG YOU A FEEBLY KICKING HALF-DEAD PENGUIN CUZ YOU AND I ARE BUDDIES.

But yeah, there are lots of reasons I'd be a terrible wildlife photographer, and that is one of them.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

The camera crew's attachment to the buffalo was sad, wasn't it? You'd get a dude on camera like it was some reality show going, "Oh, god, I feel like this buffalo knows we are a death squad!" And getting a little choked up when it finally keeled over. I expected them to cry when it was over.

There was another behind-the-scenes bit in the same series that had a camera crew staking out a location to get some shots of hunting killer whales, which meant they were spending some weeks in a nice little lagoon with adorable seal pups who thought the camera guys were their new friends. The crew was a little ambivalent about their mission to ultimately film their new friends getting EATEN BY WHALES.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

In the Minnesota Zoo's Tropic Trail, there's a Komodo dragon enclosure and next to it is the combination waterfowl/flamingo/lagoon with the gibbons on the island (gibbons HATE water, and will avoid it like the plague, so you can effectively isolate them on islands and have a combination exhibit that looks slightly more natural). Anyway, sometimes one of the flamingos will accidentally find its way into the dragon enclosure during the night. The keepers usually find out about this in the morning when they come in and there's a scattering of pink feathers on the dragon's sand. For being giant generally-slow-moving lizards, those suckers are damned fast when they want to be.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I'm picturing a dragon with some pink feathers sticking out of the corner of its mouth. "What? WHAT??"

Years ago our zoo got to host a traveling dragon. He had a really enthusiastic keeper with him who spent quite a while telling us how smart the dragon was, how they're the only reptiles with brains compartmentalized like mammals, etc. "He even knows his name!" He'd yell "Jack! Hey, Jack!" and Jack the dragon would lazily raise his head. Jack also apparently kept managing to break into the storage area for his food supply; for some reason they kept it near him (I think there was some kind of automatic delivery system) and kept having to devise new locks so he wouldn't get in. They are fast AND smart!

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

I imagine Komodo Dragons teaming up with the cephalopods and raccoons.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Don't forget stomatopods...

(Yes, this video is a joke, but stomatopods and cephalopods have roughly equal intelligence.)

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

I freaking love mantis shrimp. In my aquarium fantasies (thank you, Ursula Vernon), I imagine having a dedicated tank for a stomatopod, along with a reef tank and a mangrove/seahorse tank.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

You can keep a mantis in a 10g tank.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I don't know why, but the line "They played us for suckers!" cracks me up every time.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

WE'LL BE LIKE

"HELLO, T-REX"

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

I've seen that one! But I already knew that's how Komodo Dragons hunt, so I still think wasps are creepier.

The only thing I don't really like to see in nature programmes are wildebeests crossing the Mara River, which is annoying 'cos that's included in just about every single nature documentary filmed in Africa ever.
Wildebeests are among my favourite animals, and though not all documentaries show this particular aspect of it, I don't like to think about all the poor beesties that drown, break their legs, get stuck in the mud, or get trampled by their panicking fellows. 0.0 Oh, and hyenas are bastards too. They don't kill their prey before they start eating it up, as revealed by a sequence were a downed wildebeest gave a very distinct impression of having a death-wish as hyenas ATE IT ALIVE.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I admit I get sick of penguins. Although the painful ones for me are usually half-dead baby seals getting tossed around like hacky sacks by orcas. I swear in one program they basically said "We're not sure why the whales do this, but we think it's because they're jerks."

[annotated_em]

Geez, I've been freaked out by komodo dragons ever since I worked extensively with a student doing a research paper about those fuckers. They can climb trees! And run fast! Terrifying.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Although I admit they look hilarious when they're just walking. Something about that widespread gait cracks me up.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

“I’m David Attenborough, and I am standing in front of a feeding frenzy of KOMODO FUCKING DRAGONS.” And I'm on a horse! Backwards!

And, komodo dragons totally must have been the inspiration for 'Men Who Stare at Goats"

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

So hey, not related to above, but I'm going to see Marc Okrand, the guy who invented Klingon, speak tonight. I suspect this may interest you (for the whole variety of geeky reasons that it fascinates me). Anything you want me to ask him?
http://news.brown.edu/events/detail/2011/04/21/pwhat-klingonp

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

... Nah, the only questions I have for him are along the lines of "HOW DO I STEAL YOUR JOB" and he probably would not appreciate them.

I love Marc Okrand, though, so tell him a random fan says hi.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I have a vague recollection of seeing an episode of Crocodile Hunter in which Steve Irwin got a little too close to a group of komodo dragons and had to book it and scramble on top of the jeep, or something like that, because the lizards took too interested of an interest in him suddenly. I came away with the uneasy feeling that komodo dragons are sneakily scary little fuckers. Good to know that impression was correct.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

BTW Metaquoted!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Nature is just so gosh darn quotable!

[redbird57.livejournal.com]

So, from now on, when I wake up to find one of my cats has opened the closet door again, I'm not going to think, "OMG serial killer!" I'm going to think, "OMG komodo dragon!"

[doug glassman (from livejournal.com)]

Komodos are sort of the unsubs of the animal kingdom, aren't they? Or at least the Hollywood paparazzi stalkers.

[hrhleia.livejournal.com]

This post made me lol - not the subject, but your writing. I have always thought komodo dragons were interesting (because they're dragons), and Komodo is the one and only horror movie I've seen. This would not be enough to make me post, but right when I got to "AND THEN GIANT LIZARDS RIP HIM APART" and was laughing my cat jumped up onto the back of my chair, so it hit me in the back and basically gave me a heart attack. I think I will be checking under the bed tonight.