Visitors to the Saint Louis Zoo’s Charles H. Hoessle Herpetarium over the past few weeks will have noticed a long black curtain covering one wall of the building’s main atrium. It’s there to protect the privacy of the zoo’s newest resident, Charlie, a 7-year-old Komodo dragon who will make his official debut this week at Boo at the Zoo. Charlie is the first Komodo dragon to call the Saint Louis Zoo home in more than 12 years.
Charlie has spent the past three weeks in quarantine acclimating to his new environment after arriving from his former home at the Bronx Zoo. Justin Elden, curator of herpetology and aquatics at the Saint Louis Zoo, says the 5-foot-long lizard has been settling in well.
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“He’s a very calm dragon,” Elden says. “He’s very chill. He likes his keepers a lot and he’s a good animal, very relaxed.”
Charlie is cared for by a team of seven keepers, who work with him in pairs for safety. Komodo dragons are the biggest and heaviest lizards on earth, and they take down and tear apart prey using sharp claws and jagged teeth. They are also known for their particularly nasty bite—dragon saliva is full of bacteria that quickly poisons prey. While they’re powerful predators in their natural habitat in Indonesia, Elden says there are no known human fatalities from the species.
Charlie, who is named for zoo director emeritus Charles H. Hoessle, is now the sole occupant of the newly renovated solarium that fills the wall opposite the herpetarium’s main entrance. In the wild, Komodo dragons are typically solitary creatures. For that reason, Elden says there are no current plans to add any more to the habitat.
“They’re best kept solo unless you’re trying to reproduce them, and we’re not interested in breeding at this point,” he says. “We’re a holding institution for the species’ survival plan. This is his territory, and he’s well socialized with his keeper staff and here soon the public. He won’t get lonely.”
Charlie’s territory includes plenty of room for folks to view the impressive lizard, who splits his time among a pool, rain shower, four different areas for thermoregulation, shady plants, and lots of space for climbing about.
“Charlie loves to explore all around his habitat,” Elden says. “We tried to incorporate a lot of different features into this habitat for enrichment purposes. He has a waterfall, he has a shower system, he has multiple basking areas. And because of this variety of things going on in his habitat, he can be all over the place. He moves around quite a bit.”
Informational videos on either side of the enclosure share interesting information and declare the endangered species “the king of the lizards.” Charlie still has some growing to do, but a statue near his home shows just how big his brethren can get. According to National Geographic, Komodo dragons can grow to 10 feet in the wild and live up to 30 years.
“He’s still a young animal. We’re expecting him to get to probably six or seven feet,” Elden says. “When we were designing this space for Komodo dragons, we specifically wanted a younger animal so that he could grow with our zoo and he could grow with our team here in the herpetology department.”
Visitors can check out Charlie and his new space in the Charles H. Hoessle Herpetarium beginning October 16 during Boo at the Zoo. Regular viewing hours for Charlie begin at 9 a.m. on Monday, October 20.
