Burden's chapter "The Komodo Dragon", in Look to the Wilderness, describes the expedition, the dragon's habitat and its behavior. Defoisse, and Emmett Reid Dunn collected specimens for the American Museum of Natural History. Realizing the significance of the dragons on Komodo Island as an endangered species, the Dutch government issued a regulation on the protection of the lizards on Komodo Island in 1915. Ouwens named the giant lizard Varanus komodoensis. Ouwens carried out studies on the samples and concluded that the Komodo dragon was not a flame-thrower but was a type of monitor lizard. He recruited hunters who killed two dragons measuring 3.1 metres and 3.35 metres as well as capturing two pups, each measuring less than one metre. Ouwens was keen to obtain additional samples. The records that Ouwens made are the first reliable documentation of details about what is now called the Komodo dragon (or Komodo monitor). Ouwens, the Director of the Zoological Museum and Botanical Gardens in Bogor, Java. More samples were then photographed by Peter A.
It was approximately 2.1 metres (6.9 feet) long, with a shape very similar to that of a lizard. Van Hensbroek took the dragon to headquarters where measurements were taken. After a few days, Hensbroek managed to kill one of the lizards to investigate. He armed himself, and accompanied by a team of soldiers, he landed on the island. Hearing the reports, Lieutenant Steyn van Hensbroek, an official of the Dutch Colonial Administration in Flores, planned a trip to Komodo Island to continue the search himself. It was believed then that the odd creature could fly. It burnt them and so they could not continue the investigation. The Dutch sailors reported that the creature measured up to seven metres (twenty-three feet) in length with a large body and mouth which constantly breathed fire.
The creature was allegedly a dragon which inhabited a small island in the Lesser Sunda Islands (the main island of which is Flores). But no Westerner visited the island to check the story until official interest was sparked in the early 1910s by stories from Dutch sailors based in Flores in East Nusa Tenggara about a mysterious creature. The earliest stories (among Westerners) of a dragon-like animal existing in the region circulated widely and attracted considerable attention. Komodo Island is home to the Komodo Dragon, the largest lizard on earth. The island's surface area covers 390 square kilometres. It lies between the substantially larger neighboring islands Sumbawa to the west and Flores to the east. Komodo is part of the Lesser Sunda chain of islands and forms part of the Komodo National Park.
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