Komodo Dragon Attack: How Did The 83-Year-Old Woman Survive?

On the Indonesian island of Rinca, a Komodo dragon well over 6 feet long attacked Haifha, an 83-year-old woman, as she sat near her house making a broom from a coconut tree. Haifha, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, told the French news agency AFP that when the reptile seized her right hand in its mouth, she kicked one of its front legs, causing it to drop her hand. It was also reported, somewhat contradictorily, that the elderly woman hit the Komodo dragon's nose several times with the broom until it let go of her hand. Neighbors heard her screaming and drove the animal away.

The AFP said 35 stitches were required to repair the woman's hand. The AP reported that it was 20. Limited movement had returned to her hand after it was initially paralyzed -- the dragons' jaws, it was recently discovered, have highly sophisticated poison glands that can cause paralysis, spasms and shock through hemorrhaging. Their saliva is also highly toxic; their hunting technique tends to consist of a brief strike at its prey, then a long, calm wait as the victim dies of blood poisoning.

Two Komodo dragon attacks took place this past February in Indonesia. On Feb. 6, the AP wrote that 2 people were hospitalized after one of the lizards wandered into the office of a park ranger, attacking him as well as another parks employee who came to the ranger's aid. The ranger had apparently been attacked in 2009 by another of the reptiles. Later in February, a tour guide was bitten on his right calf as he unknowingly led four tourists past a lizard's lair.

Komodo dragons, the world's largest monitor lizards, are native to Indonesia. They are considered a vulnerable species -- the third-highest degree of threat for species found in the wild -- with somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 alive. The Surabaya Zoo in Indonesia's East Java province, it was reported in March, has been undertaking an artificial breeding program, though the reptiles are notoriously finicky when it comes to choosing mates.

In 2006, scientists reported that the females are capable of virgin births, saying that two female dragons kept in European zoos had laid fertile eggs without mating. One of them had never been in contact with the male, and the other hadn't mated for well over two years. As sperm storage (in which female reptiles preserve sperm after mating) is common among reptiles, scientists in this case performed genetic tests which proved that the offspring were the product of asexual reproduction.