'Draconology' Explained | Dragon Biology 

That sounds awesome

@Star Burger I remember there being a division between four-limbed dragons and six-limbed dragons, and one notable detail was that the “Wyrm” was a six-limbed burrowing dragon with atrophied limbs and lacking eyes.

hope I get this in high school, would be cool

Wish I'd had a biology teacher like yours.

I would have loved that. That's a great idea to get kids interested in biology.

It's either that or a dinosaur-like dragon. MAYBE a bat-like one.

@Cat Poke Except we have no bats this size, bats can't take of from the ground, and walking is not ideal for them, because their legs are not adapted for walking at all and having such long forelimbs extended to the sides would be even with other legs very tedious for walking. And bats are small, so they have not so much weight to lift for walking! Better directly under your body like in this video or you have an only cave/cliff/tree dragon that is more adapted to climbing and is small.

Monster Hunter also has some dragons that don't look like your stereotypical dragon, even though they do feature some few commonly stereotyped dragons.

they look nothing like Quetzalcoatl i think you meant Quetzalcoatlus. (Quetzalcoatl is a mayan god}

One very important part included in this is that if you look at all tetrapods, every one has just 4 limbs, and all tetrapods that fly using wings have just 2 legs.

More like "belch" fire, I recall.

A Flight of Dragons was a childhood favorite of mine. I've never really liked just how potbellied the dragons are, though.

They had like... 'pockets' in their body that expanded. It was a neat concept for the film and book. If you haven't read the book, I recommend it! I found it at my library once and read all through it. There's a lot of silly ideas in it though, the pocket idea is just one of many bizarre ideas he had for dragons.

Out of curiosity, did they explode on occasion?

Ive always thought that wyverns were 2 legged, bony offshoots of dragons.

I always thought of wyverns still being in the clade of Draconia, just like how hexapod dragons and drakes and wyrms are also in the clade. so, at least in my book, the term "dragon" is a widespread term that can describe any order of draconomorph that is in the Draconia clade. so a wyvern would just be an order in Draconia which haves features that distinguish it as a wyvern, such as a lightweight body frame, a medium-length neck, large wings with membrane reaching to the legs like some pterosaurs, and don't have gas sacks to fly, like hexapodal dragons or four-limbed "true dragons"

Exactly

As someone who's not really versed in the terminology, I always thought they were technically the same exact thing, with wyvern being a term people used to sound smarter. Whenever someone used the term "wyvern", that one episode of Jimmy Neutron would pop in my head where he calls table salt "sodium chloride". It gave me "um ackshyually..." vibes lol

They both come from different areas of the world. Wyverns originated in England and France, and dragons (at least the ones we commonly refer to as dragons) find origins in Wales. Then there’s also wyrms which come from Nordic and English myths

I love that your Mom entertained this idea and came back with legit suggestions!!!

Me and everyone in my family all assumed they'd have the chemical reaction thing going on too. I think it's a common assumption. The flint one sounds like it needs actual studies to figure out if it's possible but it's also a cool idea

My idea is that there is a gland somewhere in their throat filled with highly reactive, boiling hot liquid chemicals that turn into a gas and ignite when exposed to oxygen

@Daniel Gill she works as a vet tech. Not exactly a job where you'd be thinking about the internal workings of a dragon, but still fun nonetheless!

And I thought Anubis' pet soul eater, Ammit, was all the nightmares at once.

@ScionStorm Hippos body crocs. I'd say Ammit is all but one nightmare at once. Although eating souls is a step up from fire-breath so maybe it was an exchange program.

Add firebreath to one of the deadliest creatures on the planet and you get something you'd rather not want to meet.

You forgot the flying part as well lol

As I understand it, most of the debate regarding wyverns comes from the study of heraldry, where the distinction has a lot more importance as it was related to symbolism and involved in distinguishing people from one another by their coat-of-arms. Beyond that, it's just fantasy nerds being pedantic - I don't particularly care about the differences as it's all ultimately fiction, but to each their own.

It’s also important to remember that dragons are, ultimately, works of fantasy. So many cultures have come up their own draconic beasts, and the only feature they all share in common is that they’re reptilian in some way. You could make up any fantasy beast and call it a dragon if you wanted it to be.

John 3:16 King James Version 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and you will be saved. John 3:16 (share the good news of the gospel around the world!) Have a wonderful day/night, may the LORD bless you all, and farewell!,.,,,,,, Galatians 3:26 King James Version 26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. .....

European Dragon is honestly the best description of the most recognizable form of a "dragon". Many myths & legends in & around Europe involving dragons have them with four legs & a pair of wings that more often than not also breath fire. So, classifying them as the "European Dragon" seems fitting.

One hundred percent correct.

But the Behemoth is depicted as Bovine.

You forgot Naga

here be dragons

Yurlunggur (The aboriginal Rainbow Serpent) would be a good species name for an Australian Wyrm

Of Behemoth, Leviathan, and Ziz, only Leviathan comes close to being a dragon. Behemoth is mostly a hippo/bovine, and the Ziz is a bird. For Python: Python is actually a snake.

And centaurs too

Until the invention of firearms results in a dramatic decline in dragon numbers, stopping only in the 21st century, the "Save the Dragon" movement takes off, culminating with U.S President George W. Bush adopting a pet dragon against the advice of his staff.

A game where you're a biologist studying fantasy creatures like the zoologists of today. No need for combat or survival, you're just sitting down and observing them in action.

I really hope the author goes back in and reworks the world, the fact they mentioned that the Tiamat sea serpent hunts giant squids, i immediately imagine this guy creating a biological version of krakens and their evolution. there's so many different fantasy animals that he could put into the world, to make it a living breathing eco-system containing only fantasy and mythological animals

@Santino Solis Well, in this game gunpowder doesn't exist!

@Andres M.C. if gunpowder didn't exist, the world would be a better place for humans and animals alike.

Jaki to był magazyn?

@Maria Hanczewska Wiedza i Życie

I remember that it was awesome

Dragons: a fantasy made real is the name

@James Gabor I am aware

You can find the full "mockumentary" on youtube if you're feeling nostalgic.

I saw that

Holy crap I used to have that too when I was little, it was my favorite thing ever

Last year i borrowed the book from my school library and loved it so much was tempted to steal it.

I'd actually think an elongated snout would effect speech more than sharp teeth. I'm very interested in how a dragon could talk and what it would sound like non-magically. They could probably make more sounds with their tongue, since it's longer inside a longer snout. But I imagine it's pretty much impossible in that construction for the skin (or, in most cases, scales) around their mouths to be malleable enough to make most of the sounds we can make with our lip and cheek movements, along with the fact that the longer snout creates much smaller cheeks, much farther back, barely cheeks at all sometimes. Altho, if their lips are quite malleable, they could once again probably produce more sounds, as there is more surface area to use in different ways. And what about the construction of their tongue? It needs to function similarly to a human's tongue, being a big muscle capable of fine movements, otherwise that would also limit its capabilities. Could they have similar speech if it was forked? What if it was basically just a snake tongue? Would that really produce more S sounds like we always associate with snakes? How in fact would sharp teeth effect speech? Needles, shark teeth, teeth like mammals where they have four larger sharp teeth - what kind of differences would there be? How would their voice sound coming out of such a long neck? How much would size of the dragon play a role in how deep or loud their voices are? Could a large dragon have a high pitched, soft voice? Surely a small one couldn't produce a particularly deep voice, right? It probably has more to do with the size of its vocal cords, but that is limited to body size, so smaller ones couldn't have large vocal cords. But is there a limit on how small a large dragon's cords could be? Oh and the airway thru the nose. I imagine that opening and closing this airway would have a significant effect on the sounds, based on how large the nasal passage is. You got me on a roll lol. Based on all of this, I think most of them would have a very unique and complex language, and thus accent. If all of the parts required for speech have a significant enough amount of malleability, they could produce a *lot* more sounds than a human can. On the other hand, if the parts are more restricted in movement, they might be able to make some unique sounds, but would be otherwise unable to perform a lot of the finer motor control, and might resort to more growls and other such noises - which, to be clear, would not make them automatically less intelligent with some kind of "savage" simple language. It would just be *very* different from any human language.

@Blank Flank Thank you very much, you gave me a lot of other elements to consider. I'd imagined a long, thin and flexible tongue. Not forked, and not quite as broad and thick proportionally as ours, but longer and tapering more at the tip. They'd mostly use it to eat small fruit as the non-retractable claws on their hands make certain things difficult to do. (In addition to not picking individual small fruits like currants easily, dragons would also be horrible at sewing or other needlework and at making or repairing books.) Sort of like giraffe tongues, but not exactly the same. I imagine they could make similar tongue sounds as we can, more or less. Flexible lips would be necessary as their home planet was largely desert, so protecting themselves from blowing sand and from unnecessary moisture loss would be important. But they'd also need to be able to draw those lips out of the way when catching fish, either down/up or back, or both. So vowel sounds would be possible, depending on their vocal cords, but only when they weren't fishing or fighting. The other main issue aside from their vocal cords is their teeth- their front teeth are pointy, slightly sharper, and more closely spaced than crocodile teeth, also slightly less conical and more triangular with the flat side facing inward. That would allow them to eat their preferred diet of fish, meat, fruit, and vegetables, but would also mean that dental frictatives and africtatives would be out. Their k and g sounds wouldn't be the same as ours, and the probably wouldn't have an L sound. But would also have more chirp-like and purring or crooning sounds, as well as screeching sounds. Not necessarily as part of words, but still important for their social interaction like parents and child interaction or interjections, and with many onomatopoeic words based on them. And some word sounds are based off of those, like growling "gr" sounds being part of words with bad connotations. It would be hard for them to imitate human speech, and vice versa. Thanks again, you've really helped. If you have any other ideas please let me know.

It would probably be easier for a dragon to talk if it had a syrinx like a bird, than it could mimic sounds like a parrot or raven.

@Blank Flank i'm imagining lots of points of articulation, probably a wide variety of vowels and consonants. Probably less labials, but a lateral labial would be quite interesting (L but with the lips). Generally lots of laterals, they would be easier with a long mouth. Given serpentine similarities, lots more fricatives (hissing sounds, e.g. F, V, S, Z), and probably a lateral fricative like Welsh LL, but less approximants, trills, liquids, etc., and perhaps several series with sort of nasal obstruents, where perhaps something in the nose can block the airflow like in the mouth. Plus a few more different types of glottal sounds. However, there would be no open vowels (AH, AA, AW, OR), since their tongues probably would have less space to go down due to their narrow jaws. And likely any dental sounds (TH) which might exist would sound quite different due to sharp teeth having gaps between them, so would sound like people saying TH with a tooth having fallen out. And the glottal fricative (H) would sound more like a hiss, like how snakes do it. Of course, this all assumes that air can pass through the mouth as well as the nose - but they might actually have to speak through their nose instead of their mouth, since for many animals the mouth only connects to the oesophagus. And it assumes that dragons have a similar tongue to humans, which is all speculation.

👏👏👏

I, for one, love it when people are passionate about random shit lmao, immediately peaks my interest in what they're talking about

@Lawofseven14 oh absolutely. I love hearing about my friend's current interests. There is always so much cool shit going on

Same

@Lawofseven14 I’m gonna be that guy, ‘cause ‘proper’ word usage is my passion, but it’s piques

Wyverns cannot carry as much precious metals in one trip as those with a proper amount of limbs, it is a most unfortunate situation for them.

Generally I tend to assume in other people's work that a wyvern is a dragon with wings for arms, but in my own work I never have a distinction. Dragons range from bird like to lizard like to dromaeosaur like ETC when I draw them.

@Jade Dragon玉龍 Sure they can. They just need a specialized pouch for carrying metals.

@Cat Poke Well yea, if you're going to cheat and build pockets and such >>:=p

Same here. In most movies that feature wyverns, they are often shown as wild animals and/or the bad guys (Game of Thrones, Dragon Slayer, Smaug from The Hobbit, Reign of Fire). Four legged dragons are mostly shown as magical, intelligent creatures and/or the good guys (Dragon Heart, Eragon, How to train your dragon, Shrek etc). I guess wyverns look more intimidating, thats why they use them a lot for bad dragons.

Western dragons as a whole are represented as evil/animalistic due to the Christian association with Satan (Draco in Latin means Serpent, Serpent-Satan association). It was fairly recently that we started seeing more intelligent, wiser or even benign western dragons in media. (Glaurung being a cunning agent of evil, the dragons from the Inheritance Cycle having a complex morality system...) Wyverns are by all means dragons, most commonly in Italian and English folklore. Hell, some wyverns were portrayed as four-legged back in the Renaissance.

Agree

@Karfunkelfuchs (Orpan) Game of Thrones does not feature wyverns, they are dragons that follow evolutionary biology. In fact, within the Game of Thrones universe, there are creatures called wyverns. They are similar to dragons, but smaller, less intelligent, more aggressive, and possess venom instead of fire-breathing abilities. The best way to tell the difference between a more proper wyvern and a four limbed dragon is that a wyvern will only walk on its hind legs, like a dinosaurs, while a four limbed dragon will walk on its legs and wings, like a bat or a pterosaur.

how dare you say I have low intelligence grrr1!@!!!!@@!!12

So you mean saurosuchians that for a time live along us (look into em thier badass)

If they recently went extinct come we haven't found any remains? Surely there'd be some skeleton lying around somewhere.

Wow, interesting. I never heard of African dragon. What was their general shape looks like? The East Asian and South East Asian dragon generally resembles giant snake or snake-like body.

Looks like unrelated cultures around the world had roughly the same idea for how a dragon should look like

@Ryujin No Kami Yeah. That is one thing I am curious about also. Could it be similar creature exists in the past, or it was origin part of a story frome somewhere that travelled around the world and people begin modified dragon according to their culture or views.

@Marco Anthony it could be that the story originated with the original habitat of modern humans, and spread with them to the rest of the world

Same, I wonder how he'll do some of the more human-hybrid creatures such as Centaurs, Minotaurs, and Werewolfs?

@Peice of Nick He'd probably not make Centaurs the way they're often depicted in the Myths. I think Vikas will do Minotaurs in a similar way as ArchAngel23 did, I recommend checking out ArchAngel's Deviantart Contents if you want to know what I mean. Either that, or they'll just be Humans with boney soles and Ox-like horns protruding from their heads. As for Werewolves, I think it'll have something to do with a disease that reacts to certain Lunar Phases. He even confirmed doing Giants and Dwarves. Too bad he won't be doing Elves, though.

i'd have thought griffons would have fallen under Chimera this would have included griffons, hippogryph, manticore, and sphinx. then again this falls under the more more modern term for chimera which is denoted as any mythical creature that is a mix of any number of animal. (for example a hippogryph would technically be lion, eagle, and horse as it is the offspring of a mare and a griffon. and according to WoW it would have included deer in there somewhere as well)

@James Thomas in Vikas's case, they're a subspecies of Bird Dragon, specifically the Garuda.

@Ryon Hatcher oh i understand that, i'm just considering the idea that a griffon is more akin to chimera in the sense that the lore of a griffon is the offspring of a lion and eagle. as of late chimera has come to mean an amalgamation of two or more real world animals into one being. that is not to say i disagree with how he portrayed his version of griffon.

I know right he’s amazing

My thoughts exactly

Glad to hear it, thank you!

I also love speculative biology but sadly there arent much channels for that so CA is really great😊

Same! There are so many speculative biology artists I never would’ve found if it wasn’t for this channel.

Yeah monster hunter made it clear

@brawmanker l'exterminateur de la vie mh wyverns are basically the dinosaurs while the elder dragons are basically dragon gods.

@Marcus Go that's false the elder dragons are just sentient ecosystems while the black dragons are the equivalent of Gods

@brawmanker l'exterminateur de la vie But still they are more fantstical than the wyvern groups.

I agree, there are so much great projects on DA, have you heard of nijin konai?

Can you recommend some?

I second this!.

Yes, DA is a fun place.

I disagree on the pterosaur = wyvern part. Pterosaurs are not closely related at all to snakes, which dragons and wyverns are based on, and they don't look anything like them either. The only thing they have in common are wings made of membranes, and in that regard you could just as well call bats wyverns.

@Corvus DA I agree. This would be an example of convergent evolution, rather than actually being related. It is an interesting concept though. If the medieval society that discovered them didn't know any better, maybe they would think that way.

@Corvus DA a lot of the early birds seem a lot more wyvern like

I was just going to make a comment about the Draconology book. It has all of whats in the video and more. Great piece of worldbuilding!

I had a couple books in that series - had me fuming at this depiction of a knucker as it had no vestigial wings lol

I liked your spec alien videos. They really catch me. Will there be more?

@Little koji 9000 Thank you very much, it's really nice to hear that! Yes, there will definitely be more. I concept out, draw, and edit everything myself so it just takes a little while to produce. Plus, life n' whatnot gets in the way. But rest assured I’m always working on ‘em.

honestly it's the opposite for me; as much as convergent evolution is a thing, it's almost uncanny how similar a parareptile is to a pterosaur in anatomy and physiology. then again there's dolphins and ichthyosaurs

@Grey'sToons the fact you do it all your self makes watching them even more better. Love from Finland.

@Little koji 9000 Aaaw shucks 😊, much love to you too!!

Was about to post this, but then saw it was already done :)

And how people compare frogs and toads. All toads are frogs, But not all frogs are toads.

In Monster Hunter Wyverns and Dragons are related but completely different.

@Nuke2099 Aye, but that's where you can apply the "True Dragon" descriptor. Dragons can be the otherall group, but True Drsgons are what would be commonly called Dragons.

Lemuria doesn't exist it's a myth like Atlantis.

@oblivionslefthand Oh ok I'm from India and many people here actually believe it 😅

How to set up a alteori trap: just place it in the comments of a curious archive video :)

yo u watch him

That was fast

Report: Trap laid for next week's video. Standing by until release of footage. Will advise.

AYYYYYYY!!! (Your videos are pretty cool)

His pokemon video was really neat

It would most likely that if Mosasaurs were alive today they would be called sea dragons in some regions

If anything, most pterosaurs would be near considered as "Wyverns" if they were alive today, too. They're like the closest thing to a irl Dragon other than breathing fire or whatever as an ability.