Instead of candies or stickers, staff at the San Diego Zoo offered ground elk meat and trout as a trick-or-treat enrichment Monday.
Ratu, the four-year-old Komodo dragon at the main zoo, found the meat drizzled with fish blood inside two jack-o-lanterns in her habitat.
Reptile keeper Joey Brown said the pumpkins were placed in way to encourage Ratu’s natural behavior of scavenging.
“We hung one up high because these guys can climb trees as well,” said Brown.
In the spirit of the holiday, here’s a fact that may make you squirm.
Ratu and her fellow Komodo Dragons have special muscles in their jaws and throats that allow them to swallow huge chunks of meat rapidly.
So quickly, that they can eat up to 80 percent of their own body weight in one meal.
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That’s one of the reasons the Komodo Dragon is the top predator in its region of Indonesia.
