Desperate Housewives. The female Komodo dragon certainly are: half of the males live, 31 years on average against 62. Why? This is explained by a new study published in PLoS ONE by Australian researchers, which suggests that the "housework" it has to do to "wear down" the body of the female Komodo dragon.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him
Desperate Housewives. They certainly are female specimens of the Komodo dragon: half of the males live, 31 years on average against 62. Why? This is explained by a new study published in PLoS ONE by Australian researchers, which suggests that the physique of the female Komodo dragon is actually the "housework" what has to do.
They found out after studying 400 individuals between 2002 and 2010, in the eastern part of Indonesia. In fact, males and females would have the same size until they reach sexual maturity, at about 7 years old. Thereafter, females grow more slowly and reach 1,2 meters in length and 22 kg in weight. Males, on the other hand, grow up to 1,6 meters in length on average and weigh 65 kg.
This is because on the shoulders of the largest lizards in the world the whole family ménage weighs, including nest building and egg hatching. He usually makes 20, which he lays in the ground or in holes in trees, and keeps an eye on them for seven months. “Sex-related size differences appear to be related to huge amounts of energy that females invest in egg production, nest building and guarding, ”explains Tim Jessop, a zoologist at the University of Melbourne.
The different growth rates of the male and female could be seen as an evolutionary adaptation necessary to ensure reproductive success, experts say. Females, therefore, employ all their energies in motherhood once sexual maturity is reached, while the energy reserves of the males serve to grow theirs to give them an advantage in competition with other males for the control of females and the territory. “These results may sound strange to humans, as the lifespan between Australian men and women, for example, differs by five years. But - concludes Jessop - each species has different strategies to transmit their genes ".
Roberta Ragni
