Dragons

[GoreBag]

What if a dragon wasn't using fire to hunt, but to cook, the same way as humans learned to, simply because it makes it easier to separate meat from the bone?

[Seagrave]

Chemistry isn't my strong suit, but isn't there chemicals (potassium i think) that reacts and burns when it touches water? The body can absorb potassium from foods, such as bannanas, and uses it for it's own uses. Wouldn't it be possible that the body was able to seperate it and store some as a solution, in one bladder. Then store water in another. You could in theory have 2 wind pipe type tubes such as snakes use that can extend out so they can breath while swallowing, this would allow the solution and the water to be sprayed from the mouth with out mixing and buring within the critters mouth.

About being able to burn things to death. I can tell you from personel training as a firefighter that it would be easy to kill a large animal with out torching it. Fire can burn from several hundered to thousands of degrees F. The heat can sear and destroy lung tissue. A blast of flame to the face of a critter that was breathed in could very easily kill, or in the very least severly incapacitae the target.

All that being said, I seriously doubt dragons existed, or atleast in that form, but we'll never know. As for Dinosaurs, you gotta remember, we've never seen let alone diasected one. All we know is bone structure, and some skin imprints. There is a lot biologicaly that was contained with in that skeliton that we'll never know. We place ideas that seem logical into things we don't know. Look back at history and tell me how many time people KNEW what the ONLY answer could be , because to what they knew it was the only possible logical answer. Yet now we know they were wrong.

Anywho, thanks for the laughs, the 2nd page of this tread about killed me.

[English assassin]

Chemistry isn't my strong suit, but isn't there chemicals (potassium i think) that reacts and burns when it touches water? The body can absorb potassium from foods, such as bannanas, and uses it for it's own uses. Wouldn't it be possible that the body was able to seperate it and store some as a solution, in one bladder

Sorry, and not being arsey, but no. Potassium in food is in the form of potassium ions, which are not flammable (they have "already burnt" in a sense). I'm not sure know if a biological system could generate enough reducing power to convert K+ ions to metallic potassium, but lets assume it could. Given that animals are about 70% water, though, the problems of transporting and storing metallic potassium (which as you say ignites spontaneously in water) would surely be insuperable. You'd somehow have to get the potassium formed in a lipid (ie oil) environment, which would complicate what was already a very unfeasible reaction.

I'm going with methane (for ease of production and ignition) ignited with a small amount of spontaneously inflammable gas (bit more tricky that) when I GM my dragons.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Sorry I've responded to this so late but the budding Palaeontologist in me just clicked alive.
No offence meant at all AoM but that whole first paragraph is wrong to the core. Crocodiles and Alligators did not evolve in the cretacious period, fossilized skeletons of Primitive Crocodiles that did indeed live on land were found in 2004 that lived 230 - 150 mya called Junggarsuchussloani. These types of Reptile were called psuedosuchians and walked on their hind legs. Slowly but surely they lived more and more of their time in the water, slowly adapting to living aquatically.
The whole notion of Dragons may or may not be true, but until I see a skeleton I'm not convinced. I certainly don't believe that they evolved from crocodiles.

No, either you read my post wrong, or I'm not very good at explaining things, but let me go again.

Dragons were around in the cretacious at the end when the meteor hit. After the meteor hit, the dragons were forced into the water, where they adapted into the alligator and crocodile AFTER the cretacious. Dragons did not evolve from crocs, its the other way around.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

What if a dragon wasn't using fire to hunt, but to cook, the same way as humans learned to, simply because it makes it easier to separate meat from the bone?

You are correct. They did use it for cooking purposes.

[Peasant Phill]

alexanderofmacedon are you all basing this on that TV show?

I find the fact that dragons would use fire to cook not really believable unless a dragon prefers it meal burnt on the outside and rare on the inside. Lets assume the dragon caught something the size of a pig. The dragon would then have to breath fire on it for hours to get it cooked and even longer if it supposed to fall of the bones. And don't begin with that it builds a fireplace like the one it builds to keep its offspring warm. If dragons would be that smart it would be at the same level as early humans.

An other remark, about the land-water-land evolution. Why would an animal have fire as a weapon if it lived in the water? breathing fire is useless in a wet enviroment.

[English assassin]

No, either you read my post wrong, or I'm not very good at explaining things, but let me go again.

Dragons were around in the cretacious at the end when the meteor hit. After the meteor hit, the dragons were forced into the water, where they adapted into the alligator and crocodile AFTER the cretacious. Dragons did not evolve from crocs, its the other way around.

What Ian meant was crocodiles have been around for longer than the dragon story allows. Modern crocs evolved during the Cretaceous period, not after it. They survived the meteor. (And well developed fossil record traces crocodile evolution back well before even that time, its just the modern species that "only" arose in the cretaceous).

Crocodiles are actually a very ancient family.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

alexanderofmacedon are you all basing this on that TV show?

I find the fact that dragons would use fire to cook not really believable unless a dragon prefers it meal burnt on the outside and rare on the inside. Lets assume the dragon caught something the size of a pig. The dragon would then have to breath fire on it for hours to get it cooked and even longer if it supposed to fall of the bones. And don't begin with that it builds a fireplace like the one it builds to keep its offspring warm. If dragons would be that smart it would be at the same level as early humans.

An other remark, about the land-water-land evolution. Why would an animal have fire as a weapon if it lived in the water? breathing fire is useless in a wet enviroment.

I'm sorry I didn't specify. They used fire to cook their meat after the dinasour age when they were eating mammals with fur because the fur was hard for them to digest.

Again sorry for not specifying.

[Xiahou]

As several people have tried to mention- this show is fake, as in not true, as in madeup.

The show was basically about attempting to apply real-life biology to a fictional creature. There were no fossils, preserved bodies or anything else- that was all dramatized.

[Tellos Athenaios]

If I'm not mistaken, I've seen the same show and you must admit that it's an 'what if' - based on (fake) observations that could be seen as proof of the former existance of dragons, right?

In this post I have read several parts on the (non)existance of dragons, some seeking a mixture that would explain the fire breathing part. Now, if one dragon would use, for example, hydrogen it would end up without fire (hydrogen burns invisible and way too fast) while getting itself killed in the process (since even before little of the hydrogen has escaped the dragon it blasts the animal away into very tiny pieces (properly cooked by now)). Forget about converting K+ ions to metal, this needs an molten salt enviroment containing K+ ions. And the molten salt enviroment would require a dragon made of steel, or similair stuff. Methane seems most likely, since swamps for example contain lots of this gas. But the problem is that to ignite this gas you'd still need an open flame. Which requires not only loads of energy to make it utterly pointless, but makes it also highly unlikely that an living animal would use such a feature. Given the natural habitat of the animal, it would set the surroundings on fire and burn the dragon itself. Maybe if we just forget about a flame throwing animal?

(One note on the process of thinking requiring loads of energy as proven by an after-exams fatigue: thinking consumes so little energy that it's nearly minute and so difficult to measure that devices to measure thinking processes use the fact that while thinking your brains change chemically (i.e. K+ and Na+ ions are organized in a distinct pattern when one cell transmits a tiny jolt to an other cell). However with exams, it's the upkeep of your high hormone levels (such as that of adrenaline) that makes you tired - these processes involve lots of chemical reactions and 'wasting' of energy.)

[cunctator]

This whole thread seems to be based on the Dragon's World fictional documentary.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...v=glance&n=130

Amazon online review:

Fantasy enthusiasts and animal documentary aficionados alike are sure to get a kick from this imaginative blend of adventure and nature special that purports to investigate the discovery of a dragon’s corpse in modern-day Romania. Director Justin Hardy skillfully balances the framing story of a British scientific team that attempts to understand the creature’s unique capabilities (flight, fire breathing) with documentary-style "re-creations" (narrated by The Lord of the Rings’ Ian Holm) that explain how dragons evolved since prehistoric times. Stunning CGI effects (members of the visual effects team worked previously on the Walking with Dinosaurs series and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) help make these flashbacks as realistic as possible, but what really sells the premise is the script by Hardy and Charlie Foley (with assistance from acclaimed fantasy author Neil Gaiman), which uses real animal biology and history to present a compelling and plausible case for the existence of these mythological animals. --Paul Gaita

To produce a scientific study of a creature that never existed, then place it in a format that makes it seem credible, should be considered a sci-fi/fantasy flick, right? Nope, the good folks over at Animal Planet took the time to create an entire biological and environmental make-up for dragons, and then presented it in a format similar to all of those dinosaur documentaries such as "Walking With Dinosaurs."

By doing this, we are asked to believe in the "what if" factor. The documentary, scattered with recreations of T-Rex and dragon fights, mating rituals, hunting, and other day-to-day happenings in a dragon's life, follows the work of a small British scientific team who research a creature found in Romania. There mission is to prove or disprove a hoax.

The team, headed by a very enthusiastic rookie, begins to explain how dragons might have been able to fly, survive the K/T incident, adapt to colder climates and, most importantly, breathe fire. They explain how this precious fire gives them an edge on all of the other animals that inhabited their world until man comes along.

Though some of the science is sketchy and hard to swallow, you have to let your mind go and "pretend" that dragons actually could have roamed the earth. The acting in the flick is pretty good, though the lead scientist seemed to be forcing his emotions. The special effects are wonderful for a documentary. They are right up there with "Walking With Dinosaurs" and easily outperform any flicks put on by the SciFi channel.

Overall, an enjoyable flick that gives hope to those who have always wondered if dragons really existed. Perhaps Animal Planet will do more show like this explaining the science of creatures like Bigfoot, Chupacabra, griffins, etc.

Highly recommended for the whole family. There is just a little bit of violence, and it is all handled very well.

[Geoffrey S]

This topic based on a hypothetical tv-programme is entertaining, at least.

Flaming dragon flatulence is much less romantic. St. George would have ended up being the patron saint of proctologists!

Kinda reminds me of Discworld, with Norbert the dragon, reversing his flame to become jet-propelled.

[NodachiSam]

I've seen that documentry, which was pretty good, but they in no claimed that their conjecturing was anything but imaginative. It isn't meant to be seen as something plausible and certainly not historical. Cunctator nailed it I think. This thread, as interesting as it is, really should be in the tavern.

[Aenlic]

I did say, way back in reply #13, that the show was a "what-if" scenario based upon scpeculation to create a special effects program.

[BHCWarman88]

Dragons are Fake,Period.. I like studying about them, but they just being used in Docutmays and Myths and Fictional Stories..

[Murfios]

That new show on animal planet is faked. So are the remaining "dragon parts'' found in the cave. It's just something to entertain you while you imagine it. If dragons where actually found they would have hit the news, tv and made the finder rich. No one would have kept quiet with such a revolucionary find.
But I do watch it, Its kinda fun