• isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    14·
    20 hours ago

    Ok. So dragon flight is mostly magic anyways. There’s no way a creature the size of dragons should be able to be supported by wings of the sizes shown. And dragon fire is also pretty sketchy from a biochemistry perspective. So maybe it’s all just magic. And I’m fine with that. If that 's the case?..

    Imagine this thing can still fly and breath fire. They’re just as dangerous as a regular dragon (well minus the threat of the talons.) But they still have full dragon bite strength and fire breath. Also, because of their small size, they fly extremely fast and are very small targets for an archer to hit from a distance. They’re basically a fire-breathing skyshark.

    • emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      I mean estimates for pterosaurs give between a 30-85ft wingspan for the largest. That’s definitely big enough for a pretty fearsome dragon. It would probably have to have hollow bones and some kind of super light tough scales, but it’s not like massive flying creatures haven’t actually existed before.

    • Natanael@infosec.pubEnglish
      1·
      4 hours ago

      Plenty of ways to do chemistry to breathe fire, most of them involving gasses which either catch fire when two gasses mix or simply by sparks (could come from the teeth). Or flammable saliva. Endless options. It’s not like we don’t have weird enough animals with bioluminescence, electric eels, a million poisons, and bacteria which can heat a compost pile to spontaneous combustion, etc.

      But flight is indeed unrealistic for most dragons which are supposed to be large and heavy with insufficient wingspan.

    • boonhet@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      11 hours ago

      Now this depends on the exact setting. In the Inheritance cycle for instance, it’s a combination of both the wings and the innate magicness of dragons that neither the riders nor even the dragons themselves fully understand (for example, dragons can’t cast spells on demand, but in the right mood something that they want to happen, can happen). Lose the wings and there’s still no flight, even if flight does also involve magic. Basically, they use their wings to fly like just like a bird, but their flight power is always boosted to make up for their massive size

      • Malgas@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        5 hours ago

        I remember seeing some old animated movie as a kid that was part isekai adventure (though we wouldn’t have called it that at the time) and part documentary about dragon physiology.

        In that setting they generated hydrogen internally, which is both helpful for flight and how they breathed fire (ignited by a bioelectric organ in the roof of the mouth).

  • NXVX@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    1 day ago

    When the mammoth was revived, society rejoiced. When the dinosaurs came back, people celebrated. When we added wings to those new “dragons”, the public was divided.

    But no one could argue against the new breed of dogs.