Dragons

[Gen.Vader]

actually think of airplanes, they are not considered lightweight. the dragon could fly if it had enough thrust and power in its wings to counteract the pull of gravity of its enormus weight.

 

and dragonflies are dragons! they are just the size of a fly and cant spit out embers of hot lava.

[Darkmark]

Doh. Do I now have to draw an airfoil?

 

The reason planes fly is completely different to how a bird would. It's basically to do with the shape of the wing for planes shifting air density to cause an upward push for planes. For birds their body weight is in proportion to the upward pull created by 'flapping' their wings. Unless you expect a dragon to have airfoil wings and glide very much like a plane, it isn't going to fly unless their weight is balanced with the physics of the wings flapping. To counteract a great weight similar to an aeroplane by 'flapping' wings, those are going to have to be some very stupidly large wings...

 

Dragonflies are insects. Other than thir name, they bear little resemblance to the accepted dragon concepts.

[Swiftdraw]

If the dragon an aircraft type wings, it would need some sort of propulsion to keep it moving foward so air could flow over the wings to maintain lift. So I wouldn't want to be in front or behind the thing...

 

Or it could have really massive wings and light body construction and ride the air currents and thermals like a glider. Or it could be as usually dipicted... Anyhow, I don't think dragons could have really made it anyways. They'd cause so many fires, they'd burn up their prey's food soure after awhile and they'd be royally SOLed then.

[Teradyn_pff]

As for a real dragon, there was something I read about an old ship report of sea serpents that were big enough to attack a ship and spat some kind of corrosive acid. Acid burns and so does fire, so there you have one possible origin for fire breathing serpent. A few stories later, the serpent (a reptile) turns into a lizard (reptile) and just to make it more scary and explainable it gets wings (much more formidable and mysterious) and naturally it has to get bigger with each story too. Voila! Big winged lizard type critter that breaths fire.

 

Take this story as it moves to Europe and compair it to the common serpent/snake type dragon in the Asian countries and think about the acid spitting sea serpent as the common source and it all makes some sort of odd sense.

 

Less conventionally, if you think about the magical nature associated with dragons, who is to say that they leave a corpse after they die anyway?

[Darkmark]

From my experience everything that dies leaves a corpse (how long this corpse remains is dependant upon the creature's anatomy). A dragon would undoubtedly have bones. That's the way in which mammals, birds, lizards, fish all eveolved. Whatever area you believe a dragon could have evolved from, bones are going to be part of a corpse... and bone decays very slowly. There would be some trace other than one 'suspicious' corpse.

 

As for magic, modern magic is quite simply a lie, people/magicians claiming to do it are little more than tricksters and frauds. Some are bettter than others, but the truth remains that magic is more about reading individuals by intricate, unnoticable behaviors, and then using it in conjunction with illusion. There is nothing to prove magic exists... it is merely works of fantasy which evoloved and were passed down over the ages... like dragons in that respect.

[Teradyn_pff]

True, magic is more the explaination for an unexplained occurence. People have expanded on that to make it a mystical energy that lets people do things outside of physics, reality, etc.

 

My comment on magic was more of a joking idea, hence the .

[Ghostly_Substance]

How could silent civilizations not talking to each other come up with stunning same creature of choice ? They all cant just dream of it since there was about 8 or so and about 1 to 5 had to have diferent creatures. Phoenix for example but thats fake for now.

 

Not every corpse leave bones and if they do it might be deeper then we can search. They live far in the mountians sometimes so bones could also melt.

[Darkmark]

Melt? Were they all living in volcanoes or something? Bones are carbon based and hence tend to be quite resilient to decay over time, dinosaurs being the obvious example.

 

You'd be surprised just how many ideas are truely un-original, spawning themselves in many places yet being very similar. Silence is nothing. People had means of communication before speech, and as long as communication happens there will always be room for ideas to spread. Not that I believe they heard it from elsewhere, like I say, similar ideas and concepts are likely to occur naturally since the world as we see around us is essentially the same wherever we are. Dragons being based on what we see of creatures around us, birds, lizards...etc

[Foshjedi2004]

Dragons have always lived in Volcanos maybe they lived in a dormant super volcano and are all in the centre of the earth sleeping??

[Darkmark]

Lizards are generally creatures that thrive in warm climates it's true, but the heat of a volcano is pretty emmense. A dormant one is a possibility, I can imagine lizards/mammals capable of living there with little problem. The heat of the planet core... well that's just stupidly so. If anything can live there at all, it hasn't got an anatomy at all similar to lizard, mammal... anything. I think even some evolved microscopic cells would have trouble reproducing there.

[Ghostly_Substance]

Theres no lizards to the north also so can you explain that ? Lizards only live where its warm and lots of food such as in the water and on land. Well theres snakes here but they "hybernate".

[Gen.Vader]

Melt? Were they all living in volcanoes or something? Bones are carbon based and hence tend to be quite resilient to decay over time, dinosaurs being the obvious example.

 

You'd be surprised just how many ideas are truely un-original, spawning themselves in many places yet being very similar. Silence is nothing. People had means of communication before speech, and as long as communication happens there will always be room for ideas to spread. Not that I believe they heard it from elsewhere, like I say, similar ideas and concepts are likely to occur naturally since the world as we see around us is essentially the same wherever we are. Dragons being based on what we see of creatures around us, birds, lizards...etc

 

like sign language, or silent communication? i can see it now

silent caveman bob: .........

*a tiger comes charging at his friend bill*

bob:...........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bill:????

poor poor bill....he will be missed...hehe the tiger was right there silly!

[Darkmark]

I was thinking more cave paintings and such, but your version is fine as well

 

Basically since lizards are essentially cold blooded, and have no thick hair or fur to prevent heat escaping, they lose a great deal of heat. The result of this is that they thrive in areas where they can lay in the sun (Crocodiles I know do this very frequntly) in order to maintain a constant warm body temperature. The problem I have is that volcanoes are a bit extreme heat wise, so they're unlikely to find it a suitable environment ...through lack of food to hunt, general excess of heat. For the north, cold climates would be the death of them (Unless as I have mentioned before they are mammal) since their ability to gain heat would be overwhelmed by the cold. Hybernation is possible, but to be honest if they stuggled to survive the summer the environment is obviously not suitable for them. The ideal location would be somewhere along the equator, somewhere where temperature fluctuation and the possibility of cold isn't so much of an issue.

[plokoon9619]

Thread hijackers this is dragons not lizards. And Bahamut is the king of Dragons.

[Swiftdraw]

So is Tiamat, but thats for evil dragons.

[Darkmark]

I don't see how the thread was hijacked. We were discussing the rationality behind a possible existence of dragons. This existence, as I have pointed out before, would be most likely as either lizard, bird or mammal. In looking at how a real dragon could have lived we were also looking at where they could have lived, their anatomy...etc