Many fairy tales, medieval sagas and even Russian epics tell about dragons or flying fire-breathing snakes, distinguished by enviable invulnerability. The body of these monsters was covered with armor-scales, and instead of the severed heads, new ones grew …
The question arises: how true are such legends? Did such monsters actually exist or were they generated by the rich imagination of our ancestors?.. What do modern scientists think about this?
Dragon legends are ubiquitous
You will surely agree that the legends of any people are very different from the myths and legends of other ethnic groups. Each epic sings its heroes, each of them has its own villains … The exception is dragons, which are narrated both in the West and in the East …
It should be noted that the eastern dragon looks like a giant winged snake (by the way, this is also our "home-grown" Serpent Gorynych), while the western dragon is a fire-breathing evil monster of huge size, which looks more like a dinosaur.
It must be admitted that the descriptions of dragons throughout are pretty realistic. It seems that both the ancient Hellenes and the knights of the Middle Ages, no-no, yes, they met with armored winged reptiles, spewing fire. With whom did they draw the portrait?
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The first ones that come to mind are the large reptiles of the Mesozoic era. According to scientists, there were flying species among them. By the way, pterosaurs reached a wingspan of ten meters!..
Amazing properties of dragons
Modern aerodynamic researchers doubt that pterosaurs could take off or even glide. However, there is a hypothesis that at that distant time the Earth's atmosphere was denser than it is now, and therefore it was easier to fly. However, today's scientists do not even know many of the "aerodynamic secrets" of modern insects, what can we say about dragons!..
But the fact that the bodies of these creatures were covered with scales made of bone plates, which were not pierced by either arrows or spears, is very similar to the truth. Remember how fairy-tale heroes, fighting dragons, tried to hit them in vulnerable places, for example, hitting a relatively thin neck.
But the same tales tell us that the severed dragon heads immediately grew back or grew back. Could this be?.. Let's remember lizards (by the way, also reptiles) with their ability to regrow lost tails … Or crabs restoring claws torn off in fights … Or grape snails, which instead of cut off grow new heads!.. But among animals are real champions in self-healing. So, if an earthworm is cut into pieces, a whole organism will grow from each fragment. And hydra is able to recover even after being passed through a meat grinder!..
Based on this, it is easy to assume that once upon a time organisms existed on our planet, which were distinguished by an increased ability to regenerate. Hardly, of course, their cut-off parts could grow back so rapidly as it is said in fairy tales. But let this exaggeration remain on the conscience of the soldiers themselves, who in this way gave more weight to their own exploits …
Why do dragons need fire breath?
This question is more difficult to answer, although you can also try. Of course, these creatures need a fiery stream not at all to fry their prey. Predators are known to eat raw meat. However, let's approach this issue in a different way. We know that all reptiles are cold-blooded: their body temperature depends entirely on the ambient temperature.
This means that in order for a giant reptile to always remain mobile and strong (like a dragon), it needs an internal stove, a kind of chemical reactor that would warm the body through exothermic reactions.
Let us recall the famous bombardier beetle, which synthesizes and accumulates the initial substances for such a reaction in separate cavities of its body. For a beetle, such a device is an excellent defense against enemies. And the fiery jet would not allow the dragon to freeze. With such autonomous heating, reptiles would become both more mobile and smarter, because even snakes we sometimes accuse of cunning and cunning. What can we say about such creatures as dragons?..
Where did the dragons come from and where did they go?
Yes, I want to, oh, how I want to believe that the formidable fire-breathing dragons are not a fairy tale at all, but a real exciting story … But the question arises: where did the skeletons of the dragons go? The remains of dinosaurs are found in many (although they lived on earth much earlier), but who ever found the remains of a dragon?..
The conclusion suggests itself that the legends about dragons are akin to stories about Nessie, the elusive Bigfoot and other amazing creatures, which, as many believe today, come into our reality from parallel dimensions. This means that these intelligent monsters could have any qualities and properties.
There is, however, another theory - attributing to dragons of alien origin. However, neither the one nor the other version answers us to a very interesting question: why did all the meetings with dragons remain with humanity in the past? For example, Bigfoot still appears in our world, as well as aliens from other planets …