Are/were Dragons real animals?

BlackBart · **#41** by **BlackBart** » Aug 22, 2013 5:25 pm

Ewww. We were having a nice conversation and you had to go and make it smutty. :nono:

Ironclad · **#42** by **Ironclad** » Aug 22, 2013 5:29 pm

Doubtdispelled wrote:
Onyx8 wrote:I think the real concern here is that now that all the dragons are dead, why can't there be ghost dragons?

They aren't dead, they all left centuries ago on a spaceship with the colonists to Pern, to help The Dragonriders save themselves from Thread.

Lies! Dammit, LIES!

I'm With Stupid · **#43** by **I'm With Stupid** » Aug 22, 2013 6:00 pm

From what I've read, dragons were the UFOs of their day. An explanation for unknown objects in the sky that light up.

Matt_B · **#44** by **Matt_B** » Aug 22, 2013 6:16 pm

I'd think they were probably a combination of crocodiles, imagination, exaggeration and embellishment.

theropod · **#45** by **theropod** » Aug 22, 2013 6:57 pm

Spunkmeir?

Spunkmeir, is that you?

Splat.

_-_-_-_-_-_

Scissoring reminds me of South Park and Ms. Garrison.

explicit animated sex video, NSFW, not safe for anyone

[Reveal] Spoiler:

_-_-_-_-_-_

circa 1690 CE at the world's end, where everyone knows dragons are as thick as fleas on a stray cat.

Example #1:

Assembled officer,s and chiefs, on the aft deck being addressed by the captain:

"Thar be a dragon and I'll be ahavin' none a'it!"

Ready the port side guns with grape shot and chain. Load the starboard guns with solid shot. Make ready to come about. Helmsman make your heading 240° steady until I tell you otherwise. Gain as much speed as she'll stand. The deck crew is to drop all sails on my command. At 500 yards I want to heave the ship to port with the wind, bring those starboard guns to bear and fire every last one as they cross. The gunners will close their ports while reloading. I then want to make a quick turn starboard and drop all sails. At that point we will fire all port side guns in similar fashion as the starboard battery. If we still need to engage we can sweep back to port with our last drifting momentum and get off a few scattered rounds as the starboard guns are made ready. In a last ditch effort we must raise the sails and fire the stern battery take a course dead away from this horror. We are to retreat while all guns are loaded with canister, and as we make evasive turns these guns are to continue firing until I give the order to cease. We may then be able to hold the demon at bay while we escape. If the dragon still be alive, and after us, we must accept our fate. Be brave lads, do your duty, and off you go. God bless the Queen.

Ship burns to the water line, no survivors, but ship's log is found floating amongst the jetsam burned at the edges.

Example #2:

Mass hallucination:

The rye grain, or flour, in the ship's stores became inoculated with psychoactive fungi, and a beautiful sunrise turned into a dragon. They wasted hundreds of pounds of shot and power firing at a spectacular cloud formation, with twin anvil tops that looked like the depictions of Satanic WINGED creatures that priests used to control folks mind back then. By the time the smoke all cleared the lighting had changed and the two towers were just clouds again. That was several hours later and everyone on the boat had sore jaws from laughing and screaming and laughing about screaming.

They made a big helping of rye bread the next day. They found Atlantis but didn't take any sextant readings, or even compass heading. The hung out there for a while and learned that dragons don't like banjo music, and traded some bread for a few fine examples of advanced Atlantian workmanship (much like elf work), both 4 and 5 string versions. By the time they had exhausted their supplies they had killed several more dragons, and has lost them all to the deep. When dragons hear banjo music they just freeze up in fear ever since. This fact keeps them out of the southern USA.

Ship slams into a resort dock, and the crew can't even talk for several weeks, and when they do it's brain fried stories about battling dragons, and an obsessive craving for spoiled rye bread.

_-_-_-_-_-_

That's two stories. Dragons are now real, right? Do I get a cookie?

:drunk:

RS

theropod · **#46** by **theropod** » Aug 22, 2013 6:59 pm

I'm With Stupid wrote:From what I've read, dragons were the UFOs of their day. An explanation for unknown objects in the sky that light up.

Yep, and some called comets dragons too.

RS

BlackBart · **#47** by **BlackBart** » Aug 22, 2013 7:05 pm

theropod wrote:
I'm With Stupid wrote:From what I've read, dragons were the UFOs of their day. An explanation for unknown objects in the sky that light up.

Yep, and some called comets dragons too.

RS

The Chinese used to believe eclipses was a dragon eating the sun. The Chinese word for Eclipse is 'chih'; literally 'To eat'.

SafeAsMilk · **#48** by **SafeAsMilk** » Aug 22, 2013 7:12 pm

I wonder if Godzilla is a dragon. Makes sense, he does shoot (nuclear) fire out of his mouth. This could be our best living example of a dinosaur. It's fantastic that we have so much footage of his attacks to study!

Ironclad · **#49** by **Ironclad** » Aug 22, 2013 7:13 pm

The longest constellation I am aware of is Hydra. That's a sort of dragon. Maybe idiots looked up to the night sky and ran away screaming, "holy shit, DRAGON!1!". You never know.

Doubtdispelled · **#50** by **Doubtdispelled** » Aug 22, 2013 8:13 pm

Ironclad wrote:
Doubtdispelled wrote:
Onyx8 wrote:I think the real concern here is that now that all the dragons are dead, why can't there be ghost dragons?

They aren't dead, they all left centuries ago on a spaceship with the colonists to Pern, to help The Dragonriders save themselves from Thread.

Lies! Dammit, LIES!

Heretic! Disbeliever!

:mob:

MarkgaB5 · **#51** by **MarkgaB5** » Aug 22, 2013 8:15 pm

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/112 ... ast/page41

25% of voters believe dragons existed .. im sure not all of them are 10 yrs old. they also give reason why no fossils are left, because the acid that makes hydrogen for them to fly easier dissolves the bones after death.

SafeAsMilk · **#52** by **SafeAsMilk** » Aug 22, 2013 8:20 pm

MarkgaB5 wrote:http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1120084-Do-you-believe-dragons-have-existed-in-the-past/page41

25% of voters believe dragons existed .. im sure not all of them are 10 yrs old.

I'm sorry, I meant the mental capacity of a 10 year old.

they also give reason why no fossils are left, because the acid that makes hydrogen for them to fly easier dissolves the bones after death.

And it manages to not dissolve the bones during life how? (I'm going to regret asking this, I just know it)

MarkgaB5 · **#53** by **MarkgaB5** » Aug 22, 2013 8:22 pm

Well, the sac which contains hydrogen destabilizes during deocomposition, perhaps..thats mentioned a couple of times. Another theory is that dragons didnt have bone but instead had cartrilidge, which prevents fossilization or bones lasting long.

Doubtdispelled · **#54** by **Doubtdispelled** » Aug 22, 2013 8:22 pm

SafeAsMilk wrote:(I'm going to regret asking this, I just know it)

Fortify yourself, man! You can get through this if you only try!

SafeAsMilk · **#55** by **SafeAsMilk** » Aug 22, 2013 8:26 pm

MarkgaB5 wrote:Well, the sac which contains hydrogen destabilizes during deocomposition, perhaps..thats mentioned a couple of times. Another theory is that dragons didnt have bone but instead had cartrilidge, which prevents fossilization or bones lasting long.

Maybe their bones are made out of dirt, so that when they die there really, really isn't any trace of them left.

Maybe their bones are made out of sausage links, so that when they die they leave little roasted weenies everywhere. Convenient, AND delicious!

Or maybe they didn't exist, and you don't have to make up fanciful theories to explain why something that doesn't exist has left no evidence behind.

SafeAsMilk · **#56** by **SafeAsMilk** » Aug 22, 2013 8:26 pm

Doubtdispelled wrote:
SafeAsMilk wrote:(I'm going to regret asking this, I just know it)

Fortify yourself, man! You can get through this if you only try!

tolman · **#57** by **tolman** » Aug 22, 2013 9:45 pm

MarkgaB5 wrote:But how do you explain the accounts of dragons which are written as if they were true? (eg. [location] a dragon attacked villagers and the [name] army slayed the dragon])

I'd question such accounts by pointing out that people do seem very keen on collecting things like saint's finger bones, but I've yet to hear of any castle or cathedral with a collection of dragon bones or dragon hide.
Or to hear of any fossils which appear to be either dragons or anything like dragons.

You think that if someone did kill a dragon that they'd just chop it into unidentifiable fragments and chuck it in a river, or bury it where no-one could find it, or leave it intact for its magical vanishing chemical powers to take effect?

And you do realise the complete stupidity of thinking an animal of any meaningful mass could make itself fly by producing hydrogen gas, given the low lifting power of hydrogen per unit volume, and the mass needed for the envelope to contain it?

Also, there's the fact that even ignoring the flying and fire-breathing, unless dragons are supposed to be incredibly long-lived and desperately slow-breeding, the frequency of reports of them in recorded history seem surprisingly low for things which people would be highly likely to notice if they existed, and which, if they existed, would be expected to be producing all manner of little dragons if they weren't going to die out.

How do *you* explain all the accounts from travellers, written as if they were true, of tribes of men with no heads but faces in their chests, or all manner of chimera-style beasts?

Possibly behind them, there's something like the odd (likely stillborn or soon-dead) mutant human, or some confusion over a fetus or a competent League-of-Gentlemen-style hoax animal chimera put together for fun or profit, but it seems unlikely there's anything beyond that.
Alternatively, they're just made-up shit to be sold for the entertainment of the uneducated.

theropod · **#58** by **theropod** » Aug 22, 2013 9:54 pm

SafeAsMilk wrote:
MarkgaB5 wrote:Well, the sac which contains hydrogen destabilizes during deocomposition, perhaps..thats mentioned a couple of times. Another theory is that dragons didnt have bone but instead had cartrilidge, which prevents fossilization or bones lasting long.

Maybe their bones are made out of dirt, so that when they die there really, really isn't any trace of them left.

Maybe their bones are made out of sausage links, so that when they die they leave little roasted weenies everywhere. Convenient, AND delicious!

Or maybe they didn't exist, and you don't have to make up fanciful theories to explain why something that doesn't exist has left no evidence behind.

Trouble is we do have fossils which preserve far more delicate biological structures than cartilage. Insects, and feathers, in amber? Pollen in deep ocean sediment?

Any dragon worth its sparks would be as large as a T. rex, surely. That would require some robust mechanical support structures that would surely fossilize. Ossified hadrosaur tendons from the distal vertebrae support system litter some Hell Creek bentonite flats, and these were cartilaginous-like and not bone in living dinosaurs, so if there were dragons around there should be evidence no matter the support system.

There isn't any such evidence, but maybe we'll find a flying reptile-like thing as big as a building made out of soap and could have puked up napalm on demand. Someone wake me up when there's a reliable report in the journals.

RS

Skinny Puppy · **#59** by **Skinny Puppy** » Aug 22, 2013 10:02 pm

Someone drew that, you can’t explain that.

• I bought underwear and it was white, now it’s brown and yellow, you can’t explain that.
• You eat solid beans and they come out as gas, you can’t explain that.
• A green salad goes in, comes out brown, you can’t explain that.
• Toilet paper is white, turns brown, you can’t explain that.

laklak · **#60** by **laklak** » Aug 22, 2013 10:18 pm

tolman wrote:
And you do realise the complete stupidity of thinking an animal of any meaningful mass could make itself fly by producing hydrogen gas, given the low lifting power of hydrogen per unit volume, and the mass needed for the envelope to contain it?

NOW it makes sense. In order to lift themselves, and at the same time have enough spare hydrogen to "flame", they'd have to be big. Like, really big, like Navy fucking BLIMP sized. They'd have to have relatively small wings - huge wings would be too heavy, necessitating more hydrogen, a sort of vicious circle of lifting power -vs- thrust. They'd have looked like ginormous, gas filled manatees with little fluttery wings. Probably several sets of fluttery wings distributed longitudinally, with a couple of "thruster" wings for close maneuvering. So, with such small wings relative to body mass they would have been ungainly, slow, cumbersome beasts, floating slowly overhead, twisting in the winds, torching villages and scaring the bejesus out of the natives, till one smart one - just one smart ground ape - discovered....

Fire arrows.

Can you say HINDENBURG, muthafucka?! In no time the news spread all across ground ape land. Just shoot the fucker with a fire arrow and Badda Bing Badda BOOM no more dragon. Given their hollow, hydrogen filled bones and their enormous, blimp sized gasbag bodies, they'd burn to cinders before they hit the ground. Oh, the huge manatee! No wonder there are no fossils, no skeletons, in fact no physical trace of them at all. Just the sad story of a misunderstood species, driven to extinction by unthinking humans. Hardly a rare occurrence, unfortunately. Like the dodo and the passenger pigeon, Bigfoot and Nessie, another victim of homo sapiens sapiens bloodlust.

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