Dale Denton, age 11, of Gastonia, North Carolina, for his question:

Is the Komodo dragon related to the monitor lizards?

Naturally he does not qualify with the fire spitting, flying dragons of legend. They were nightmares created by human imagination. The Komodo dragon is an honest to¬goodness real live animal, ten feet long and packed with 300 pounds of muscular might. After zoologists studied him for several years, they classified him as a monitor lizard. So far as we know, the so called dragon is the giant of the monitor family Varanidae    and largest of all the lizards.

The monitors are large, long lizards with tapering tails and toothy, tapering snouts. Their tough reptile skins have quite small scales. Though their legs are widely spaced, they are much stronger and faster than other lizard legs. The long slinky monitors remind one of their snaky relatives. So do the long snaky tongues that dart from their giant jaws.

Around 1900, it seemed likely that all of the large monitor lizards had been discovered. Various species had been known in Africa and Asia.for ages and a century or so ago other monitor kinfolk were identified in the region of Australia. The 25 or so known species ranged from about four to more than seven feet in length.

Then, in 1912, a Dutch ship returned from a voyage among some lonely Pacific islands between Borneo and Australia. On board there were five strange animals that just had to be enormous lizards. They had been captured on Komodo, a mere island on the map. The world of science was agog. Nobody imagined that these amazing lizards existed.

The huge long body and his weird darting tongue reminded people of the legendary dragon of old. He became known to one and all as the Dragon of Komodo, alias the Komodo dragon. Zoologists studied and hesitated for a while to classify him.

In 1926, a party of experts studied the dragon lizard on Komodo and found his kinfolk living secluded lives on three other ocean isles    Padar, Kintja and Flores. Studies of the great lizards in their native habitats verified them as monitors. They now are classified with 30 or so known species of the lizard family Varanidae.

The islands of the dragon lizards have plenty of warm bare rocks, a few pine trees and scrawny patches of tall tough grasses. The fast and cunning hunters pursue the native boars and wild cattle

After the world of science adjusted to the great monitor, his species was traced hack through the ages. His ancestors shared the continents with the dinosaurs    and left their fossilized bones to prove it. About 60 million years ago, when the climate was milder, the dragon monitors enjoyed life in Wyoming. Nobody knows why their numbers dwindled or why the few survivors retreated to remote islands. Some suspect that perhaps they were driven from the continents by the same events that wiped out the dinosaurs. But nobody can prove it.