Hypothetically, how much do you think a (fictional) dragon eats?

[ScottyDsntKnow]

I like to go with the Flight of Dragons theory of dragonflight. They have a set of very hard teeth that can grind up limestone. They grind this limestone up and swallow it into a crop or a second stomach of sorts. There it is broken down into Hydrogen. This serves 2 purposes. 1st is it makes the dragon super buoyant and getting off the ground and staying airborne requires much much less effort than previously thought. 2nd is that it means they can be cold blooded and still breathe fire. Exhaling hydrogen from the air bladder will make maintaining flight more difficult or impossible after a point but some sort of bio ignition system in the top of the mouth would ignite the hydrogen on its way out.

Therefore you could have a flying dragon larger than what would be normally possible without an air bladder, cold blooded to require a lot less food than a warm blooded animal and extended brumation periods would allow a low intake of food for an animal so large. Small herd of cattle for an animal the size of a small airliner like a 737 could easily sustain it for a year or more which would keep the food supply from being too depleted, even with multiple animals.

[Crowfingers]

It would, however, mean that certain types of injuries to the mouth, teeth, fangs, etc, could conceivably make the dragon's head explode.
Terry Pratchett's swamp dragons can breathe fire because of the volatile stew in their stomachs, but are rather prone to digestive difficulties of an explosive nature.

This nearly made choke, I really shouldn't read and eat lunch at the same time. I just kept picturing a knight fending off a dragon bite, the dragon loosing some teeth and being really angry then attempting to cook the tiny human and BAM! it's head explodes

[Coluber42]

I like to go with the Flight of Dragons theory of dragonflight. They have a set of very hard teeth that can grind up limestone. They grind this limestone up and swallow it into a crop or a second stomach of sorts. There it is broken down into Hydrogen. This serves 2 purposes. 1st is it makes the dragon super buoyant and getting off the ground and staying airborne requires much much less effort than previously thought. 2nd is that it means they can be cold blooded and still breathe fire. Exhaling hydrogen from the air bladder will make maintaining flight more difficult or impossible after a point but some sort of bio ignition system in the top of the mouth would ignite the hydrogen on its way out.

Therefore you could have a flying dragon larger than what would be normally possible without an air bladder, cold blooded to require a lot less food than a warm blooded animal and extended brumation periods would allow a low intake of food for an animal so large. Small herd of cattle for an animal the size of a small airliner like a 737 could easily sustain it for a year or more which would keep the food supply from being too depleted, even with multiple animals.

I like that theory!

It does seem that many sources describe dragons as being extremely long-lived, so in addition to spending a lot of that time brumating they probably also have a very slow reproductive rate, which would be necessary in order to keep the population density low enough to not exhaust the food supply. Maybe they are like 17-year cicadas, and every 113 years (113 because it is a prime number, it is over a century, and it ends in 13) they all come out at once to breed.

And then every 113 years they go on rampages, which is just often enough to keep the knights interested in making periodic attempts, thus providing the occasional interim mineral-rich snack. Otherwise they might have to gut-load the cattle with iron filings.

[Vipera Berus]

Well logically speaking since some dinosaurs evolved into birds I would assume that dragons split off from this lineage, at least based off Occams razor (google it but short version is the simplest explanation is usually right). Therefore I would assume that the firebreathing and the large size (anything over the generally accepted max 25kg weight for flying birds) would make flight possible by using something like hydrogen (think Hindenberg airship). I would also use the bombardier beetle as to the mechanism as it can produce an explosive irritant at high temps as to how it would work.

[paulh]

I like to go with the Flight of Dragons theory of dragonflight. They have a set of very hard teeth that can grind up limestone. They grind this limestone up and swallow it into a crop or a second stomach of sorts. There it is broken down into Hydrogen. This serves 2 purposes. ....

Unfortunately, limestone is mostly calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Stomach acid is mostly hydrochloric acid (HCl). Mixing acid and CaCO3 produces carbon dioxide, water and calcium chloride. No hydrogen. Zinc metal and hydrochloric acid would react to produce hydrogen gas.

A Boeing 747 is 70 m long with an interior cabin width of just over 6 m and an empty weight of 162 tonnes. That seems a bit excessive to me. Scrooge McDuck's money bin might not hold quite enough treasure to cover a dragon that big. The white dragon of Pern was about the size of a horse. But he was a dwarf specimen. Seems to me that a more realistic range would be somewhere between the size of an elephant (Asian elephants--2 to 3 m from shoulder to toe and 2 to 5 tonnes in weight) and a good sized sauropod dinosaur such as the Apatosaurus (formerly Brontosaurus), which was 21-27 m long, 3-4.6 m tall at the hips, and 30-35 tonnes in weight. But I can't visualize a physical mechanism that would let a creature in that size range actually get off the ground.

Sauropod dinosaurs had a pretty good sized "brain" in the spinal cord at the hips. We might postulate that the hindquarters brain had a levitation function built into it. And the wings were for maneuvering. Dragons are fantasy creatures, so why not a fantasy flight mechanism?

[Ax01]

this thread raises a very good question and has many posts w/ valid points that i pretty much agree with.




also how often do u guys think that dragons like to cook their food w/ their dragon fire breathe? or is that just a hunting or defensive thing? i wonder if dragons like their food rare, med rare, med or well done...

[Luvyna]

Now this is the kind of discussion I joined the forum for! Loving all these theories so far