Five Komodo dragon hatchlings have been born at a zoo in Spain, the first successful breeding of the world's most giant lizard – an endangered species – in the country since a decade.
"This is a great achievement for all of us," Milagros Robledo, the head of the herpetology department at the Bioparc Fuengirola zoo in southern Spain and self-described "mother" of the dragons, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Their natural mother, a 13-year-old female named Ora, laid a clutch of 12 eggs in August. Five, out of the dozen, were selected and artificially incubated over seven months.
"It was a great task, very tedious and time-consuming, but one that has given us a lot of satisfaction," Robledo said, adding that the hatchlings represented "a hopeful future" for the species.
The hatchlings are lighter than a lemon and shorter than a shoebox, but one day the tiny reptiles could reach nearly 3 meters (10 feet) and weigh up to 70 kilograms (150 pounds), armed with sharp teeth and venomous bites.
In 2021, these apex predators, native to four Indonesian islands, were added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's "Red List," as only about 1,500 specimens remained in habitats facing climate change threats.
The baby dragons' parents mated on June 24 last year, when Spaniards celebrated the feast of St John. So the first one to hatch was christened Juanito in honor of the date of conception.
Juanito's siblings include Fenix, named so because the egg survived damage during incubation; and Drakaris, whose name is a reference to George R.R. Martin's popular fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire."
In the wild, newborn Komodo dragons tend to move to treetops and need no maternal or paternal care, Robledo said. But in captivity, they live in separate terrariums so that vets can monitor their growth until they are reunited before being displayed to the public.
