Let us build a dragon.....

[vampirehunter42]

Ok, I have been thinking on this for a while. If, a dragon was real it would have to have a working body. I would like to work out without "magic" how the body would work and was put together.

To make it easy we will work on one body type at a time and start with the wyvern. (the one with wings for forelimbs)

[Falconer]

Large muscles in the leg and chest. A ridge on the breastbone for the flight muscles to attach to. The wings are large, about 150 feet wide for a 100 foot dragon. The overall anatomy is similiar to a reptile's except that there is an additional organ branching off the trachea. Methane and hadrogen gass produced in the intestine are channelled to here along with other chemicals, where they are stored, to be ignited and exhaled upon demand. Ignition comes from the chemicals mixing to produce a sort of white phosphorous/ Greek fire mix.

[Lumbajack]

So basically, and i'm not trying to offend anyone here, you are suggesting the light their farts, and they fart through their mouths?

[Silentiea]

In order to facilitate flight, they need to weigh significantly less than something of their size generally would. This issue is addressed in birds by having porous bones, but that porous of bones for a dragon would be practically made of air. I think it more likely that a dragon's skeleton be made (at least mostly) of cartilage, such as that of a shark.

[Dariune]

Not finished yet but i covered many of the aspects.
Have a look

http://www.dragonstouch.co.uk/page7.htm

[Corva]

Their body would be thin like a snakes, about 1 foot in diameter, except where the wings attach. Large 'bouyancy sacks' through the body contain all the lighter than air gasses they produce. Very large wing span. Heavier than air gas expelled through the rear end during fights, which counteracts the force from the fire and the losing of lighter than air gas.

[Dariune]

One thing i find is often missed when people theorise on the physilogical structure of a dragon is evolution. In all creatures evolution tends to have a reason for what it does.

The same must therefore be said for dragons. That being the case we must ask ourselves how the dragon contains these gasses. Why does the dragon wish to fly in the first place? If it is a snake like body, where then would it contain a large enough amount of gas for it to create a lift?
If it has that much gas how would it expel it? and many more. By asking these questions we often find more answers than had we not asked them before.

Just my opinion.

[Corva]

A snake like body, not a snake sized body.

[Dariune]

I realise, and i am not disagreeing with you.

But the questions are worth asking anyway.

If it has a snake like body, and i assume you mean long as opposed to round, then on inhalation, when the gasses fill the stomach and the body prepares itself for lift the body could not be snake like. It would have had to expand. Would it not make sense then (biologically speaking) for the dragon to have a slightly more rotund apparance than a snake?

Im not arguing with you, just posing the question.

[vampirehunter42]

Do remember we are only working on the wyvern as of now. We will work on the others later.

One problem with the "lighter than air gasses". It would take a lot of it to lift a creature the size you are talking about. We are talking 90% of the body is holding the gas. And remember if you bring a gas into a smaller space it gets heavy and becomes a liquid. And at that time no longer gives lift. And while in gas form most of these gasses really don't burn that badly, that is the heat from them is not all that great compared to fire from a liquid or solid.


As for cartilage, it is much to soft for the use for a dragon. Remember the front of your nose is cartilage and is very flexible. But it does seem to work for bat wings.


Ok, let us look at size. Please show me where a 100 ft creature has been known to fly.

But on that I say we look at the flying creature examples:
Birds
Pterosaurs (flying replies)
Bats (flying mammals)

I really don't think they would have the build of birds so we'll toss that for now.
Now the largest wing spans of the pterosaurs may have been around 30 to 40 ft. Still quite impressive, but not even near the 100 ft mark. So I see a bone build more in the family of this.



It is a known working model, and has shown to be a decent size. And as far as I can tell bats are made about the same. But they have their own things.

I'll post more later need some more time.

[Falconer]

So basically, and i'm not trying to offend anyone here, you are suggesting the light their farts, and they fart through their mouths?

If you want to phrase it that way, yes.

And keep in mind Dariune, you are assuming evolution is true. NOt to set off another debate, but intelligent design would allow all manner of dragon physiology.
I don't think the cartillage idea is accurate, since such a skeleton would not be strong enough. And why would they need to weigh less? Jet fighters and airliners weigh tons, and they can fly without flapping their wings. It seems to me that dragons would flap their wings more to propell them forward, and less to keep themselves up.
Also, in joints there is a tradeoff between flexibility and strength, so for a dragon's wing, the strength required would mean that where the wing connects to the body, there would only be up and down and some back to front movement. I doubt they are as flexible as in the movies.

[vampirehunter42]

But the airplane wing is made for flying. It has a proper shape and shape for flight, only the bird has wings like that. And you may notice the large things that are normally on wings called jet engine. They put out a massive amount of thrust in order for the plane to fly. For example the C-5 Galaxy has 4 TF39 turbofan engines each putting out 41,000 to 43,000 lbs of thrust. This is a huge plane by the way.

But tell me this, what use is the fire breath? I really don't see any way it can be a useful item other than through 'magic'. I don't care what gas you is made in the creature natural (or otherwise), it would not give out enough heat to be worth the energy used in its making.

And speaking about energy, in order to fly this animal will burn a lot of it.



To continue my point we are looking at a creature with a body length of a maximum 10 to 15 ft, and a weight of less than 350 lbs. Most of witch would be muscle mass needed for flight, and a bone structure needed for the muscles to work off of. As well as large lungs to help fuel the working body, an amazing circulatory system and a very good digestive system. I don't see anywhere in the body where creating a gas (for a weapon, or otherwise) will be of proper use of the mass of the creature. Let us say it would not be very intelligent to design a creature like that.

[Corva]

How about lighting their farts to propel themselves forward?

[Falconer]

My point being that a dragon's wings are as suited for flight as a jet's.

[vampirehunter42]

How? I agree a wing is a wing, but this will add even more mass to the wings to make them the correct shape to make lift. And where will it get the power to lift the extra mass? A bird has feathers to do this, a airplane's wings are hollow and shaped to maximize lift. I in no way see how the dragon's wings (as we see them) can create lift. I see the wing working more like a parachute or kite than an aircraft wing. And reading through the links I found a the Berkeley site, I would agree with the light weight wing. Remember flight is a battle of weight verses power, a several thousand aircraft does not just take off with a gust of wind you know.

I like these links, they will help with the end result wing.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrate ... /pter.html
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrate ... /aves.html
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrate ... /bats.html

[Dariune]

So basically, and i'm not trying to offend anyone here, you are suggesting the light their farts, and they fart through their mouths?

If you want to phrase it that way, yes.

And keep in mind Dariune, you are assuming evolution is true. NOt to set off another debate, but intelligent design would allow all manner of dragon physiology.
I don't think the cartillage idea is accurate, since such a skeleton would not be strong enough. And why would they need to weigh less? Jet fighters and airliners weigh tons, and they can fly without flapping their wings. It seems to me that dragons would flap their wings more to propell them forward, and less to keep themselves up.
Also, in joints there is a tradeoff between flexibility and strength, so for a dragon's wing, the strength required would mean that where the wing connects to the body, there would only be up and down and some back to front movement. I doubt they are as flexible as in the movies.

Yes i am assuming evolution is true. Were it to be a higher being that created dragons and us this discussion would be far easier.

But assuming we, like all creatures, evolved (which is my opinion) then the most likely candidate for a dragon would be as i have described.
The bones would indeed be strong enough were it to have a a crisscross of cartillage inside the tubes.

But as has been mentioned, we are discussing a Wyvern so i will stop arguing a dragons physiology.

For a creature so thin to fly would on first glance be impossible. One of the largest wing spand to body mass creatures is the common bumble bee. You may or may not have seen how clumsily it flies. A Wyvern would have a far larger body comparitivley to its wings.

Well i "fart lighting" idea could work in theory but personally i cant imagine hat giving a Wyvern lift enough to take off. Even were the wings extremely large.

I think the 1st step to answering this seemingly physical impossibility would be to agree on the size of a Wyvern.
With that we can calculate what would be needed to make a body mass of the agreed size fly.

So? What do you think?

[vampirehunter42]

I chose wyvern to work on first because of the "normal" body build for a back boned creature it has. (that is two arms and two legs)

Well for size I think no larger than a horse, but at least an adult size of a large dog. But if we look to the past and check out the quetzalcoatlus (it was named after the god)

Quetzalcoatlus was a flying reptile whose wing-span was just under 36 feet wide (10.96 m). It was the largest flying animal ever found. It had hollow bones, was lightly built, and had a small body. Even though it was very big, it probably weighed only about 300 pounds (135 kg). It had toothless jaws and a long, thin beak. The neck was 10 feet (3 m) long. The legs were over 7 feet (2.1 m) in length, as was the long head.

And it is one of the largest ever (known) flying creatures.

While the largest bat.

Bats (Chiroptera). The largest bat species is the Giant golden-crowned flying fox (Acerodon jubatus), a rare fruit bat and endangered species that is part of the megabat family. The maximum size is believed to approach 1.5 kg (3.3 lb), 55 cm (22 in) long, and the wingspan may be almost 1.8 m (6 ft). The Ghost Bat (Macroderma gigas) is believed to be the largest carnivorous bat, belonging to the microbat family.

As for birds (note this one is extinct)

Wingspan: 5.8 to 8 m (19 - 26 ft)
Wing area: nearly 7 square m (75 square ft)
Wing loading: c. 11,5 kg/square m
Length: 3.5 m (11.5 ft)
Height: 1.7 to 2 m (5.6 ft - 6.5 ft)
Weight: 65-100 kg (143 lb - 220 lb)

We may want to check out the Wandering Albatross and the Andean Condor as well.


http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjec ... tlus.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_gold ... flying_fox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Bat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentavis_magnificens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandering_Albatross
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andean_Condor

So we can see a creature like this can be a fair size, I would guess a body length of 10 to 15 ft (nose to tale). But that would have to be in an area with a lot of updrafts to help it fly.

[Silentiea]

Dariune, I looked at your webpage...

Are you saying that the dragon digests its own skeleton, and then eats limestone in order to rebuild it's bones?

[Dariune]

In a word, yes.

But no.

A skeleton suggests the bones supporting a creatures form.

I am suggesting a honeycombed structure of bone.

Also to digest something indicates a quick dissolving of a substance. Whereas i am suggesting a slow deterioration (though faster than our own bones) to create a liquid Calcium and of course Hydrogen.

Limestone contains a high quantity of Calcium which would help to sustain the bones through out this process.

Its not as unbelievable as you make it sound.

[Corva]

Got to bring the thread up to stop it dying prematurely.

[Silentiea]

Why not just make them digest the calcium in a separate stomach that digests slower...?