Thomas Landry, age 13, of Fredericton, New Brunswick, for his question:

Is the Komodo drawn a sort of lizard?

Of course, a dragon in name only. Actually, he is a huge monitor type lizard who looks somewhat like a left over from the days of the dinosaurs. Like all the monitors, he is a sort of "super lizard" very strong and powerful and surprisingly fast on his feet. True, the huge beast does resemble a long snake like dragon, but he does not qualify as one. The legendary dragon was supposed to breathe smoke and fire.

The real live komodo dragon cannot perform this feat. The large monitor lizards of Africa and southern Asia have been known for ages, and later they were found in Australia. They are small scaled, very toothy reptiles with very long, tapering bodies. Their legs are much stronger than those of most lizards. In addition to their huge bodies, the monitors also have long snake like tongues. At the turn of this century scientists assumed that all of these big lizards had been found and classified. Indeed, it ~ d not seem likely that any more reptiles of this size could have been overlooked 1912 a Dutchman named Ouwens returned from a Pacific voyage among the lonely little isles between Borneo and Australia, and with him were five enormous lizards, so far unknown to the world of science. They had been captured with plenty of help from the local inhabitants on Komodo, a mere fly speck of an isle on the map. They did look like dragons with long, darting tongues.

Needless to say, news of their arrival created quite a stir, and the public promptly named them Komodo dragons, and the name seemed very suitable. Scientists studied them more carefully before classifying them with the already familiar monitor lizards. In 1926 a party of experts went to study the 10 foot dragon in his native home. They found that this largest of living lizards also lived on three other tiny, forgotten isles    Padar, Kintja and Flores. These lonely islands are warm and rather barren, mostly covered with bare rocks, tall, tough grasses and a few pines.

One would think that finding this big lizard would be no problem at all. But he prefers to keep out of sight. And while basking in the sun or dashing briskly over the ground, he is hard to spot because his brownish grey coat blends with the natural scenery.  Later, the dramatic history of the Komodo dragon was traced back through the fossil remains of his ancestors. At one time he shared the continents with his monstrous reptile cousins, the dinosaurs. Some 60 million years apo, the big monitors lived in North America. Perhaps the same circumstances that wiped out the dinosaurs also drove the monitors from the continents. At any rate, they retreated to their last island strongholds and somehow managed to survive there    almost unnoticed through the ages.

Of course, they were known to the small human populations who shared these islands. But few ships ever visited there, and certainly the big monitors never came down to the shore to greet them.

The scientists who went to study them in 1926 had a hard time finding them, so finally they set out large helpings of pork and hid behind a screen, all set with¬cameras. After a while, the suspicious lizards were tempted and hungrily pounced on the bait, thus revealing themselves to be observed.