I've spent a decent amount of (ongoing) time on dragon biology... that Discovery special left me extremely dissatisfied. Wasn't even science.
It was a cute special. And it did point out a few - points, though I will admit I have seen better speculations and answers on the internet. Something like this or another site that seems to be down, that pointed out that dragons most likely would be between 30cm and 3 meters. Considering the amount of animals that are bigger than this, and has only been discovered through the last few years, it could be possible that a being of that size, that is intelligent and able to hide itself, easily could be around. /dragon-nerd.
i belive a lot of the monsters/creatures stories have some truth to them, my faveriote are orcs. butmaybe its from to much: WarcRaft III: reign of chaos=)
[quote]The Percy Jackson series involves a lot of mythical creatures. i love those series, rick riordan also just wrote a contiuetion (whatever) as if percy got lost and the story is from somewone elses point of viw
I'm a total dragon nut as well. I guess my feeling was that the Discovery special could have been much more creative. There just wasn't enough there. Biology is a wondrous, almost infinitely complex field. The body is a very heavily wired series of integrated systems, so usually when you change one thing, a number of other things have to change as well. I LOVE biology. There's just so much to explore, and I went to town with the dragon, because a large point of contention is that as they are, they don't have a hope of flying. But once you design better wings, you have to redesign the diet, the flight muscles, the oxygen delivery and the circulation.
Ah! Before I get carried away, there have been some BIG flying animals, including Argentavis Magnificens, so it's not a huge stretch of the imagination that a dragon could be larger than 3 meters. At least, it isn't for me, with the right alterations
It's sometimes a shame that Earth has such strong gravity. Lower gravity would have allowed larger creatures to evolve - maybe even 'dragons' as we think of them in mythology.
Oh, definitely. Maybe even a higher oxygen content in the atmosphere would have helped. I read somewhere in some journal that Earth used to be more oxygen rich, and that was part of the reason some dinosaurs were able to grow so large. Combine that with a slightly lower gravity... there's potential.
I think the point with them being relatively small (30 centimetre long dragon would be a wonderful companion) was that is is easier to hide like that, than if they are the typical giant beasts. It was made specifically to show that it was indeed possible that there was dragons about even now, stating that they could be living in rain forests (the number of new specimen found there every day is gigantic), which would mean that most evidence of them would be gone in a matter of days, and with a lightweight skeleton that would easily compose or be ignored by humans that wandered the rain forest, the only way it would be possible to actually prove there was anyone about would be to capture one, as they could most likely hide very well, with a fine camouflage and being rather intelligent beings after all. It's not like we humans are masters of finding stuff we aren't looking for anyway. We disregard everything that doesn't fit in properly as either being fake or misunderstood, and as they did show in the special, evidence of dragons on earth could very well have been classified as something else.
The popular misidentification is with dinosaurs (as a fellow dragon nut, I'm sure you're aware of that ). If we are talking strictly what COULD exist on Earth right now, or in Earth's history, rainforests are possible--for very small ones. It would be interesting if there was also a marine version lurking somewhere, given how even more unexplored the oceans are.
But if given free reign to create a plausible beast... that's another story!
Ah! Before I get carried away, there have been some BIG flying animals, including Argentavis Magnificens, so it's not a huge stretch of the imagination that a dragon could be larger than 3 meters. At least, it isn't for me, with the right alterations
The past has known even bigger ones. Have you heard of the Quetzalcoatlus?
The popular misidentification is with dinosaurs (as a fellow dragon nut, I'm sure you're aware of that ). If we are talking strictly what COULD exist on Earth right now, or in Earth's history, rainforests are possible--for very small ones. It would be interesting if there was also a marine version lurking somewhere, given how even more unexplored the oceans are.
I am going to go mention the blue fish that was rediscovered some years back after having been thought extinct. 2 metre long fish people thought was extinct. So it wouldn't surprise me if something larger and more dangerous would be about. But that leads to the question about intelligence, as there is a rather limited amount of oxygen in the deep ocean, the brain need a good deal of oxygen to function, as well as nutrition, and with the limited amount of food and warmth... There might be a big, dangerous something down there, just waiting..... And I think my energy to discuss dragons just ran out for today.
Yeah, mine too for the moment. I believe you're referring to the coelacanth? Are they blue...?
I don't know, and not going to check now. But basically that is what they are called in Danish "Blaa fisk" which is blue fish in English. Then there are some of the creeps like gordon and frill sharks and all all the wonders that got stranded during the tsunami. A lot of strangeness we had little idea about.
