Dan Volatile
1956 Jubilee Butterfly
Posts: 8,251
Joined: Jan 2010
Reputation: 234
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RE: What TV show did you last watch?
Komodo - Secrets of the Dragon 2011 BBC
That DVD cover makes it look like a kiddies animation - "How to Train Your Komodo"
It's actually a one hour documentary about the world's biggest lizard which can grow to a length of 12ft and is known to devour the occasional human.
The Komodo is found on a few islands in Indonesia the largest of which is Flores which interestingly was also the home of the smallest known human species, Homo Floresiensis.
The focus is on the research of an Australian biologist called Bryan Fry who is an expert on venomous animals. He convincingly debunks the widely held myth about the dragons which is that their oral hygiene is almost as bad as Shane McGowan's and that their prey are killed by the cocktail of pathogenic bacteria in their saliva. Fry uses MRI scanning to show that the dragons have venom glands in their lower jaw. He then gets a sample from a tame dragon called Monty and shows that they produce an anticoagulant. Other work not mentioned here shows that the venom also contains a hypotensive compound. The small mammals that the dragons prey on die from their wounds quickly with the help of these agents. The myth arose because water buffalo, which were introduced recently by humans, are much bigger than the dragon's normal prey and take a long time to die perhaps through sepsis. Fry shows that the dragon's saliva is no more fetid than that of other animals and that the likely sources of infection are the pools which the buffalo wallow in which are full of their own faeces.
There's aalso some interesting stuff on the evolution and origin of the dragons and thier unusual reproduction which I won't go into here as Dukes of Hazard is about to start on Forces TV.
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21-03-2020 17:55 |
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Doddle
Clean hands, dirty heart
Posts: 27,656
Joined: Jun 2010
Reputation: 139
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RE: What TV show did you last watch?
(21-03-2020 17:13 )Dan, Dan the Volatile Man Wrote: (20-03-2020 22:01 )Doddle Wrote: I don't know that I really watch the Smithsonian channel, but like PBS America, it at least seems to offer fresh and thoughtful programming, unlike ITV2 for example.
Yep there's some interesting stuff on the unfashionable end of the epg.
I'd also keep an eye on Forces TV. I've got 133 documentaries from there on my tv recorder to watch.
I know when I'm outclassed Quote:The Trip to Greece, pt 1
Coogan & Brydon back again. They started in Turkey, famous for not being in Greece, and finally arrived in the right country on a ferry at the end, where they sang some Rod Stewart to commemorate.
pt 2
More singing, oddly, and many more impressions. They also ditch the car so they can travel by boat, visit the set of the Mamma Mia film, and get a massage.
Clive James Wrote:Reality is a useful brake on megalomania.
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21-03-2020 21:17 |
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