'Draconology' Explained | Dragon Biology

I remember a high-school biology project in which we had to create a basic phylogeny graph for dragons, including drawings. It was very fun.

My opinion was always that Wyverns are a type/subspecies of dragon. Saying "that's not a dragon, that's a wyvern" is about as useful as saying "that's not a dog, that's a border collie!"

Have you ever heard of the 1982 animated movie “A Flight of Dragons.” They answer a lot of Dragon biology questions like the fact that Dragons can fly because they are essentially organic hydrogen balloons and they breathe fire to vent it off.

I actually pondered on how dragons would be able to breath fire and I brought the topic up to my mom. I had the idea that they had to have an organ in their body that would produce a highly reactive gas, or liquid, and that when it was forced out it would either ignite from the oxygen or something else would ignite it internally, which is where my mom got the idea that Dragons would have a crop like chickens have, and throughout a dragons lifetime they would eat rocks of Flint that would go into that crop. When the dragon needed to breath fire that crop would constrict extremely fast while the gas/liquid came up, igniting and sending out flames. The Dragons internals being protecting by a thick, flame retardant, mucus.

"If hippos were carnivores that lit their prey on fire." So all the nightmares at once.

"I know my feeling on this are weirdly strong" Listen man, you run a channel talking mostly about world building and speculative evolution. It would be weirder if you didnt have strong opinions on the classification of mythical creatures.

I’m surprised there isn’t more dragons with names taken directly from mythical dragons. I could absolutely see Orochi, Gorynych, Lindwurms, Basilisks, Serrushes, Leviathan, Behemoth, Ziz, Python, Ladon, and even to an extent Typhon fitting in well to this family tree.

I like how the "true dragons" didn't end up looking like the "stereotypical" dragon. Instead they had a very Quetzalcoatl appearance, which makes it believable. As cool as a dragon looking like Draco from Dragonheart would be, I could see a pterosaur-like dragon being more realistic.

I remember watching a "documentary" on dragons as a kid, it was like a project trying to explain a world where dragons existed and went extinct, telling the story of a paleontologist obsessed with dragons. It was so good, and my little kid mind was blown away so hard

YAAAAAAAY DRAGONS! MY FAVORITE!

Something similar to this with birds would be cool. Phoenix, Thunderbirds, Roc, Basilisk, Caladrius, Peng, Garuda, Quetzalcoatl, Pegasus, Hippogriff, Mothman, Sirens, Erinyes, Angels, and Valkyrie would all be interesting biographical subjects.

I remember when a science magazine I used to read as a kid once published an article about dragons as an April Fool's joke. They weren't so blatant as to claim that large fire-breathing reptiles like the ones from the legends really exist, but presented them as an order of winged reptiles inhabiting the jungles. Being a kid, I believed them.

Until a few years ago, I didn't even know about the dragon - wyvern debate. I've always thought (and still do): all wyverns are dragons, not every dragon is a wyvern, just like every duck is a bird, but not every bird is a duck. Dragon is just a broad term for many different creatures. The one with four legs and two wings are european dragons (just my way of thinking, not saying it as a fact...not sure what most people's opinion is).

Wrong. You don’t have unusually strong feelings on wyverns vs dragons. Any cultured individual has a strong opinion on wyverns vs dragons

0:21 THAT BOOK! It's what made me obsessed with worldbuilding, had me discover this whole way to approach a fantasy world and while it hasn't turned me into a biologist to learn how I could better implement some sci- into the -fi, worldbuilding and interpreting more pseudoscientifically other fantasy worlds has entertained me countless hours.

The fact that this person has created an entire taxonomical tree of dragons that goes really in depth is amazing to me. The detail and individual concepts of each dragon are amazing and I love it. My only problem with this is how the dragons have these weird, janky proportions. Their legs look way to small to hold them up, they seem to stand way too upright, and their wings dont seem to have the surface area to lift such a massive creature. Overall, though, amazing concept.

I had a book called dragonlogy, the dragon eye and lots of interesting stuff. And we can call pterosaurs wyverns since they flying reptiles

My favorite book! Edit: I've always perceived the Wyvern vs Dragon debate like how people compare Tortoises and Turtles. All Tortoises are turtles, but not all Turtles are tortoises. Likewise, all Wyverns are dragons, but not all Dragons are wyverns.

I really appreciate the thought that went into their dragon phylogeny. It seems they they had a background in biology and know the rules of nature that would govern the evolution of such animals. The big one that I noticed was that they didn't just randomly add or subtract limbs and they adhered to keeping core anatomy consistent between the groups. I always find it frustrating when I see speculative zoology dreamt up by people that don't understand how anatomy works or how animals radiate and diversify through evolution, but try as I might, I actually can't fault this. They thought it out, they knew the rules and they worked within it to create a quite believable draconian family tree. I also greatly appreciate the fact that they branched the group off as a parareptillian offshoot rather than trying to shoe-horn dragons into true 'Reptiles' and thus either break the Reptilian lineage or severely box in the features of what dragons would have. On a divergent topic but still draconian in nature, I always imagined the 'flame gland' of dragons as being an evolution of a venom gland given that venom glands already provide the framework for such anatomy and provide enormous diversity in chemical cocktails produced. The fangs as a delivery system also keeps flames well away from soft tissues. If the animal was already evolved into a venom spitter (like some snakes employ), that's half the system in place with only the final jump needed in the composition before it becomes flammable. The incendiary venom would likely best work as an exothermic reaction created by mixing two components (such as in bombardier beetles) where the compounds are harmless by themselves but once mixed at the point of ejection and passing through oxygenated air, would catalyse into combustion.

I’d love this as a video game. Create a Skyrim-esque world except where dragons aren’t mythical creatures but wild animals that could have adequate intelligence and small levels of society (like a smart dolphin). I think the approach would be cool bc it could be a mechanism for keeping humans in a medieval age since dragons would prey on cities like wolves on sheep.