I Store Fire Breathing Animals? Top Answer Update

Last week we talked about what’s the closest thing to mythical dragons we have on this planet. However, the gliding lizard lacked one of the most iconic aspects of a typical dragon: the ability to breathe fire. Unfortunately, no documented animal has the ability to breathe fire, but there is one group of animals that are generally considered to be the closest to it: bombardier beetles. Bombardier beetle is neither a species nor a genus, but a general classification of some beetles in different genera with this fire-breathing ability. I’m going to talk about the Asian bombardier beetle (Pheropsophus jessoensis) because that’s the one with the most information about it online.

Although the image above doesn’t quite look like the bombardier beetle is spitting fire (one because it’s coming out of its butt instead of its mouth, and two because it’s a weird powdery white liquid instead of a red energy source), it does have one similar effect. The bombardier beetle uses this ability almost exclusively for defensive purposes. If a larger animal is hit by this spray, it will become blind and temporarily lose its ability to properly operate its respiratory system. A group of ants, on the other hand, would be killed instantly by this adaptation. To put it as we understand it, his spray is capable of burning a human hand, leaving it yellowish-brown for up to three weeks. This is partly because of the highly irritating chemicals that are released and partly because the spray reaches 212 degrees Fahrenheit (the boiling point of water). The beast gets its name Bombardier Beetle because the chemicals emanate as an explosion rather than a stream. If they feel threatened, they can deliver up to twenty bursts of chemicals in a short amount of time.

The bombardier beetle is a living example of the use of chemistry. The two chambers in the beetle’s abdomen contain different chemicals, one containing hydrogen peroxide and one containing hydroquinone. Both are harmless chemicals and, more interestingly, both chemicals react relatively little with each other. In order for them to produce the explosive result that the animal needs, the bombardier beetle also introduces a catalyst into the mixing chamber. The mixing chamber breaks down the hydrogen peroxide into boiling water and the hydroquinone uses the oxygen to oxidize to benzoquinone, which is a very irritating chemical. The Bombardier Beetle has surprisingly good aim, with the ability to target predators and pesky ants on, directly below, behind, and even directly in front of them.

Creationists have argued about the bombardier beetle, claiming it is evidence that natural selection is flawed. This is a reasonable argument because the bombardier beetle contains an intricate infrastructure not shared by any other animal species. Also, there are three necessary ingredients for this tier to thrive, and they must be incorporated in a very specific way or else: best case scenario and the tier lacks the ability to use the ability at all, and worst case scenario, the animal holds a blast inside itself. Today, however, this counterexample has been proven to be fairly invalid, as shown by a number of other animals with similar adaptations to using the same chemicals for defense, but in less sophisticated ways.

Interviewed works:

Alaska, Bryan. “Amazing Insects: The Bombardier Beetle.” Western Exterminator Company, Ask Mr. Little, June 27, 2016, www.westernexterminator.com/blog/amazing-insects-introducing-bombardier-beetle/.

Simon, Matt. “Absurd Creature of the Week: This beetle fires boiling chemicals out of its butt.” Wired, Conde Nast, July 19, 2018, www.wired.com/2014/05/absurd-creature-of-the-week-bombardier-beetle/ .

Bel and the Dragon, Complete The Story of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon, Greek Apocryphal Addendum to the Biblical Book of Daniel. It is a deuterocanonical work as it is accepted in the Roman canon but not by Jews or Protestants. It tells of the Jewish hero Daniel, who refuses to worship the god Bel and kills the dragon, forcing him into a lions’ den, which he is allowed to leave after seven days because he is unharmed. His enemies, champions of idolatry, are later thrown into the lions’ den and devoured.

Mainstream geologists and biologists accept the abundant physical evidence that the Earth is billions of years old; that all organisms are evolutionary descendants of a common ancestor; and that non-avian dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago (e.g. Gradstein et al. 2004; Prothero 2007). In contrast, the authors of the Young Earth Creationist (YEC) have long claimed that the Genesis account of creation and the biblical timeline are literally correct, estimating the creation of the earth and all sorts of organisms at around 6,000 years. A consequence of this position is that dinosaurs and humans were created on the same day and therefore must have met. The claim that dragon legends are based on such encounters has long been a mainstay of YEC literature, and in 1977 biochemist and YEC author Duane Gish took up this concept in his children’s book Dinosaurs, These Terrible Lizards, postulating that dinosaurs breathed fire. Other YEC authors followed suit (see references below), and dinosaurs now spit fire in seventh grade biology textbooks from BJU Press (Batdorf and Porch 2013; Lacy 2013).

In support of the idea that a real animal can create fire, Gish (1977) cited the defense mechanism of bombardier beetles (Brachinus spp.), which spray a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone in the faces of would-be predators. Chemical catalysts cause the mixture to reach a boiling 100 °C (Aneshansley et al. 1969). Subsequent YEC authors followed Gish’s lead and added imaginary details such as sparks or explosions or flames (Phillips 1994; Hamp 2000; Isaacs 2010; Paul 2010). In reality, the beetles merely spray hot liquid—which burns but produces no flames—and thus provide no biological precedent for organic fire formation.

Some YEC authors have cited bioluminescent animals and electric eels as biological precedents for fire production (Morris 1984; Petersen 1986; Morris 1988; Niermann 1994; Morris 1999; DeYoung 2000; Petersen 2002). However, the processes that produce bioluminescence (Haddock et al. 2010) and bioelectrogenesis (Pough et al. 2013) are not chemically related to combustion and produce little or no thermal energy. These processes are therefore irrelevant to the development of a fire and offer no biological precedent for this.

Proponents of the fire-breathing dinosaur hypothesis have proposed a number of potential mechanisms of fire production, discussed below, each of which is a separate hypothesis in its own right. Below I use scientific data to evaluate each hypothesis. Each of these hypotheses implicitly predicts that not only is the mechanism physically possible, but that it will not cause serious injury to the animal. Any hypothesis is falsified if any of these predictions are not met.

Exhalation of pyrophoric gas

Henry Morris (1984) and James Gilmer (2011) suggested that a fire-making reptile could exhale gases that would ignite on contact with oxygen. A substance that ignites on contact with air is called pyrophoric. When a pyrophoric gas is released into the air from a container, it will explode after traveling within a few centimeters or millimeters of the opening. The wider the opening, the closer the explosion gets. For example, the pyrophoric gas silane (SiH4) produces an explosion 5–80 mm from the mouth of a 4.32 mm diameter tube and 5–30 mm from the mouth of a 3.5 mm diameter tube (Tsai et al. 2010) . Given this, a pyrophoric gas released from the nostril or throat of a large dinosaur—an opening more than a few millimeters in diameter—would have exploded immediately (Figure 1) and burned the animal’s face or throat. The serious harm this would have done to the animal refutes this fire generation hypothesis.

The hypothesis would be tenable if the nostrils were protected by a fireproof tissue, but animals produce no such tissue. Many animals produced highly keratinized epidermal derivatives (hair, feathers, horny sheaths, etc.) that protect against abrasion, but these burn when exposed to fire, as do cuticles made of collagen or chitin. If dinosaur snouts had produced a protective, non-combustible, mineral shell (such as calcium carbonate or calcium phosphate), that shell would have petrified, as is common with hard animal parts. No such shell is present on the snout of a dinosaur fossil.

Ignition of spewed methane

Herbivorous mammals emit large bursts of methane (belches) daily, averaging twenty-six per hour in cattle and forty-two per hour in sheep (Colvin et al. 1958; Ulyatt et al. 1999; Koch et al. 2009). John Morris (1999) suggested that herbivorous dinosaurs did the same, secreting a pyrophoric material from a gland to ignite the methane expelled.

However, once released from a container (like a dinosaur’s oral or nasal cavity), a gas immediately spreads in all directions; the methane would quickly surround the dinosaur’s head. The pyrophoric gas would not only cause a nose or mouth burn if it escaped, but would also ignite the cloud of methane-enriched air around the animal’s head, burning the surface of the head in the resulting fireball (Figure 1). The serious damage that would have been caused refutes this fire generation hypothesis.

Cases in humans confirm that inflammation of combustible burps causes facial burns. Belching in humans usually involves the expulsion of swallowed air that is methane-free and non-flammable. However, in adult cases of pyloric stenosis, flammable gases can accumulate in the stomach due to fermentation of food when passage to the duodenum is obstructed. When a patient spits out these gases while smoking, the lit cigarette ignites the gases and the resulting fireball causes facial burns (Galley 1954; MacDonald 1994).

Ignition of methane by an electric organ

Several species of fish have electrical organs made from modified muscle cells called electrocytes, which are arranged in series so that their voltages add up (Gallant et al. 2014; Sillar et al. 2016). Most electric fish species produce weak, harmless impulses that are used for navigation, recognition of other fish, and transmission of social signals (Lissmann 1958; Sillar et al. 2016). In contrast, electric eels (Electrophorus electricus) and torpedo rays (Torpedo spp.) generate impulses strong enough to stun prey (Sillar et al. 2016) or cause serious harm or death to humans (Copenhaver 1991; Carlson 2015).

DeYoung (2000) and Gilmer (2011) suggested that dinosaurs possessed an electrical organ like the electric eel and used it to create a spark to ignite metabolically produced methane. However, as we have seen, the ignition of emitted methane would engulf the animal’s head in a fireball. In addition, electric organs do not produce sparks.

A spark is an electrical discharge in air. The permittivity (a measure of how easily an electric current flows through a material) of air and methane are both low, around 1.0 (Wohlfarth 2013), while that of water is over 60 (Harvey 2013). Because of this, the current generated by an electric fish flows easily through water or through biological tissue—which is mostly water—but not through air or methane. Because electric current follows the path of least resistance, current flowing from one part of an animal to another flows through the animal’s tissues and does not jump as a spark through an air or methane-filled gap between body parts. For example, if a dinosaur had enough voltage between its upper and lower jaws for an electric current to flow from one jaw to the other, and the dinosaur opened its mouth and spat out some methane, no spark would jump into the methane cloud; Instead, the current would flow through the dinosaur’s jaw muscles from one jaw to the other. There would be no spark, flame, or other visible evidence that the electrical event had occurred (Figure 1). This fire generation hypothesis is thus falsified.

Figure 1. The lambeosaurine dinosaur Corythosaurus casuarius showing hypothetical mechanisms of fire production in dinosaurs and the results that would occur in a real animal. Note that some proposed mechanisms would harm the animal and the others would not create fire. Lambeosaurine dinosaur Corythosaurus casuarius demonstrates hypothetical mechanisms of fire production in dinosaurs and the results that would occur in a real animal. Note that some proposed mechanisms would harm the animal and the others would not create fire.

Ignition of fuel by a spark generated by friction

Gilmer (2011) hypothesized that a dinosaur could generate a spark through friction to ignite a combustible gas such as methane “in the mouth, throat, or [or] internal organs”. However, no animal produces a material that produces sparks in response to friction. The tough materials that make up animal bodies—calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, chitin, and keratinized integument derivatives—do not spark when rubbed together. Flint, which creates sparks when rubbed, is a form of silica (SiO2), a chemical that can be precipitated by some microbes (Erlich and Newman 2009). But even if flint-producing microbes inhabited the mouths or pharynx of dinosaurs, methane ignited there would explode there, causing serious internal injuries.

Internal organs are anoxic environments and therefore do not allow flame formation. The only exception to this rule is in the respiratory tract, but flames generated here cause serious injury or death (Wöllmer et al. 2010). Even the digestive tract contains too little O2 gas to support a flame (Levy 1954; Cunha et al. 2011) (Figure 1). So this hypothesis is falsified.

Emission of a hypergolic chemical pair

Isaacs (2010), Batdorf and Porch (2013), and Lacy (2013) hypothesized that dinosaurs could create fire by releasing a pair of chemicals that would ignite on contact with each other in the air after escaping from the mouth or nose sprayed. A pair of chemicals that spontaneously ignites when combined without a separate ignition source is referred to as hypergolic. A hypergolic chemistry pair includes a fuel chemistry and an oxidizing chemistry. Numerous hypergolic chemical pairs are known, but most of these chemicals are man-made and either do not occur in nature or—as in the case of liquid oxygen—must be cooled to temperatures that animal bodies cannot withstand. The two exceptions are hydrogen peroxide (an oxidizer) and ammonia (a fuel), both of which are produced by organisms. However, the fuels with which hydrogen peroxide is hypergolic—kerosene, pentaborane, or mixtures of hydrazine plus methanol (Sutton 2006)—are extremely toxic to organisms. Likewise, the oxidants with which ammonia is hypergolic – liquid oxygen and liquid fluorine (Sutton 2006) – have boiling points too low (-183 ºC and -188 ºC, respectively [Compressed Gas Association 1990; Hammond 2013]) for organisms to withstand Presence as liquids. There is therefore no known hypergolic pair of chemicals that organisms can resist producing.

In addition, the emission of a pair of hypergolic chemicals would harm the animal if one or both of the chemicals were gaseous. Because a gas diffuses in all directions immediately upon release, a pair of gaseous hypergolas would surround the dinosaur’s head and envelop it in a fireball as they react with each other. If one hypergol were gaseous and the other liquid, upon release the gaseous hypergol would immediately spread in all directions and reach the point of exit of the liquid hypergol from the body, incinerating the animal at that point. These versions of the hypergol hypothesis are therefore falsified.

If both chemicals were liquid, they would have to be sprayed at such angles that the two jets would converge far enough away from the animal not to burn it. However, this version of the hypothesis is tainted by the lack of a pair of hypergolic chemicals that animal carcasses can resist the presence of.

Lambeosaurine dinosaur crests

The duck-billed dinosaurs of the subfamily Lambeosaurinae had hollow ridges, and several YEC publications—including the seventh-grade biology textbooks published by BJU Press (Batdorf and Porch 2013; Lacy 2013)—interpret these ridges as storage or mixing chambers for combustible gases (Gish 1977; Petersen 1986; Morris 1988; Niermann 1994; DeYoung 2000; Petersen 2002). However, the hollow passages of the ridges are part of the airways (Evans et al. 2009). Anything stored or mixed there would have restricted airflow and resulted in suffocation. Also, the left and right passages are separate, precluding intermixing except in a posterior compartment that housed the olfactory epithelium (Evans et al. 2009). Anything mixed and burned there would have destroyed the animal’s sense of smell and caused internal burns (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Corythosaurus casuarius showing hypothetical combustion-related functions for the crest. Note that all of the proposed features would cause harm to the animal. Corythosaurus casuarius showing hypothetical combustion-related functions for the crest. Note that all of the proposed features would cause harm to the animal.

Associated with each of the left and right nasal passages in the lambeosaurine skull is a lateral diverticulum, a blind sac that extends upward from the nasal cavity (Evans et al. 2009) (Figure 2). The diverticulum lies to the side of the airway so that a gland or storage device located there would not obstruct the airway. However, in modern-day archosaurs (crocodiles and birds), diverticula from the nasal passages house only air, not glands or storage structures (Witmer 1997; Witmer and Ridgely 2008). In addition, fire production methods using lateral lambeosaurine diverticula would have injured the animal. If the lateral diverticula harbored glands that release pyrophoric chemicals into the air in the airway, it would have created a burn in the crest (Figure 2) and caused internal burns. If a duct directed pyrophoric chemicals to the nostril and ensured that the burn occurred outside the ridge, the tissue around the nostril would suffer burns (Figure 2). If each lateral diverticula housed a gland that produced one of two hypergolic gases, the gases exiting the nostrils would diffuse in all directions and burn, engulfing the animal’s snout (or possibly the entire head) in a fireball.

If each lateral diverticulum harbors a gland which produces one of two hypergolic fluids instead of gases, and if ducts conduct the fluids to the nostrils and if the fluids are projected by muscle pinching, and if the two streams of fluid converge far enough beyond the snout to produce a To avoid burning when the two streams touched and ignited, the animal might have avoided injury. However, there is no bony evidence for the presence of the requisite glands, ducts, or muscles in the lambeosaurine skull (Evans et al. 2009). Furthermore, there is no pair of hypergolic chemicals where animal bodies can resist the production of both. So this hypothesis is falsified.

Gnarly explosive caps?

Isaacs (2010) hypothesized that dinosaurs possessed a “piece of cartilage” that extended beyond the bony snout, like mammals, and “possibly housed a mixing region for chemicals and oxygen used for combustion”. However, nasal cartilages do not harbor fire-producing mechanisms in known animals. More importantly, if a cartilaginous “lump” had housed a burn, the structure would have suffered burns, disproving this hypothesis.

Other Mesozoic Reptiles

Booker (2005) hypothesized that the enlarged cavity at the tip of the snout of the Cretaceous crocodylform sarcosuchus harbored a fire source. Wieland (2005) and Paul (2010) suggested that the cavity was used to mix combustible gases. In seventh grade biology textbooks, Batdorf and Porch (2013) and Lacy (2013) also suggested that the cavity was used to generate fire.

The appearance of an enlarged cavity at the tip of the snout in adult Sarcosuchus is due to developmental broadening of the snout. In Sarcosuchus, juveniles have a narrow snout, and the entire length of the snout expands during development, so that the snout tip does not widen by itself, but along with the rest of the snout (Sereno et al. 2001) (Figure 3). The broad snout tip of the adult is thus developmentally related to the width of the snout as a whole, not to any particular function of the snout tip. Narrow-snout crocodiles feed almost exclusively on fish, while medium- and broad-snout species are general predators with a diet that includes large prey (McHenry et al. 2006). The change in snout proportions in Sarcosuchus is therefore functionally linked to a change in diet as the animal grows.

Figure 3. Snouts of juvenile (left) and adult (right) Sarcosuchus imperator in dorsal view showing that the large width of the nostril in the adult is an artifact of the ontogenetic expansion of the entire snout. Modified from Sereno et al. (2001). Snouts of juvenile (left) and adult (right) Sarcosuchus imperator in dorsal view, showing that the large width of the nostril in the adult is an artifact of the ontogenetic expansion of the entire snout. Modified from Sereno et al. (2001).

The widening of the snout combined with the lack of a bony internal bar between the nostrils gives the illusion of an enlarged cavity at the tip of the snout in Sarcosuchus. Most existing species of crocodiles also lack a bony internal bar and instead possess a soft-tissue septum separating the nostrils (Iordansky 1973). There is no reason to suspect otherwise in Sarcosuchus, so a single, enlarged cavity in the adult is highly unlikely. Even if it had existed, generating fire within it would have burned the animal, disproving this hypothesis.

Gilmer (2011) hypothesized that the crests of “some pterosaurs, such as the Pteranodon” could “store combustible gas. . . for on-call deployment.” This hypothesis is anatomically unrealistic; In some crested pterosaurs it is possible that the crest contained air-filled diverticula of the nasal cavity or middle ear cavity (Bennett 2001), but the crests are extremely thin in cross-section and do not provide enough space for storage and in extant archosaurs the nasal diverticula contain only air (Witmer 1997; Witmer and Ridgely 2008). Furthermore, in Pteranodon itself there is no evidence that the frontal bone, which makes up the entire crest, is affected by nasal diverticula at all (Bennett 2001). So this hypothesis is falsified.

The true origin of dragon legends

The biological reality behind the origin of dragon legends has long been known. The word dragon is derived from Ancient Greek δράκων (drakōn) and Latin draco, both meaning “serpent”. Many ancient Greek and Roman artifacts depict Drakōn/Draco myths in which the animal depicted is a snake (Ogden 2013; Senter 2013). Greek and Roman works of natural history described the drakōn/draco as a serpent. Some of this work restricted the term to large, non-venomous constrictors, notably the Aesculapian snake (Zamenis longissima) or African and Indian pythons (Senter 2013; Senter et al. 2016).

European kite lore developed in the Middle Ages. Rumors that kites could fly and create fire existed in the fifth century (Senter et al. 2016). In the tenth century, dragons were routinely depicted with feathered wings and two limbs (Temple 1976; Mittman 2006). The depiction of dragons as quadrupeds with bat-like wings began in the 13th century and became common during the Renaissance (Allen and Griffiths 1979; Benton 1992; Absalon and Canard 2006; Morrison 2007). For about four centuries, when naturalists of the 19th century were giving the first scientific descriptions of dinosaurs, European artists were regularly portraying dragons with an eerie dinosaur or pterodactyl appearance. Speculation that human encounters with these animals might have inspired dragon legends naturally followed, and YEC literature now routinely portrays dinosaurs as fire-eaters. But as shown here, that is unrealistic, and its continuation in science textbooks is downright irresponsible.

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Komodo dragons are living, breathing dragons, even if they don’t breathe fire. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t some really cool — and wild — reptiles. Komodo dragons are the largest lizards and there are 3,000 species! They live on just five islands in southeastern Indonesia. And while they may not be big enough to knock down a castle, the Komodo dragon is quite large — adult males can reach 10 feet in length. They are ready, willing, and able to protect themselves with their 60+ sharp teeth and long, sharp claws.

This fake dragon skull was cobbled together out of faux bones as part of a marketing effort to promote the fact that Game of Thrones is coming to a streaming service. But the crazy thing about this photo is that the lady might not know that. With that huge dragon skull, why is she so calm? Heed your dog’s warning!. Taylor Herring on design boom

Group Effort Dragons do not exist (as far as we know), but some of their individual traits are found throughout the animal kingdom.

It would have taken a few turns for natural selection to produce dragons, but if you’re willing to stretch a little, most of the classic dragon traits exist in other species as well. They just don’t come packaged in a tier.

First on the kite checklist: fly. Dragon wings are usually depicted in two ways – a third pair of limbs connected to the spine, or webbed forearms. Jack Conrad, a paleontologist and reptile expert at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, thinks the latter is more plausible.

“It seems that having six limbs in vertebrates is very unlikely,” he says. “The only thing that has almost six limbs is these frogs in the western part of the US that get this nasty parasite and end up creating extra limbs. Even then, the new limbs are identical to the hind legs, and the frogs don’t fare well. It seems that every time nature tries to create a vertebrate hexapod, it dies. That seems to be the main limitation.”

A pterosaur’s leathery wings are the best possible flight mechanism for a giant lizard, according to Conrad. “Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of 30 feet,” he says. “That would do.” Large, strong wings are necessary to support the weight of the dragon’s skin, which of course would need to withstand a bow and arrow. “Let’s throw in a little alligator for armor,” says Conrad. An alligator’s skin is made up partly of bony plates, he explains. When European settlers first encountered the reptiles, the skin proved tough enough to deflect a musket ball, strong enough for a dragon.

OK, so we have a very large alligator with pterosaur wings that can deflect musket fire. Now all it has to do is spew flames. There is no parallel here – there are no known animals that can breathe fire or even a flammable liquid. But there are some bugs that can shoot caustic chemicals from their abdomens that can burn people’s skin, so it’s not entirely out of the question that an animal could eventually produce a flammable liquid. Cobras can spit venom at objects two meters away with great accuracy; The dragon was able to borrow this ability to power the flammable liquid. As for the lighting? “Well, maybe if you had a special organ like an electric eel’s tail dangling in its mouth, that could ignite this liquid and allow the creature to breathe fire,” says Conrad. “It’s all very theoretical, of course.”

This article originally appeared in the August 2010 issue of Popular Science magazine.

Could they really get as big as 747? “I don’t think that’s feasible. The largest animal that has ever lived, whether extinct or alive, is the blue whale. The reason it can grow so large is because it lives in the ocean, so its weight can be partially borne by the water. If you put a blue whale on land, it wouldn’t survive because it wouldn’t be able to support its own to maintain weight. So if you have something like Drogon that is only astronomical in size, his legs would break due to the structural limitations of the bone. Even if it had a steel skeleton, it would still be too heavy to fly. Even hypothetically, if your bones weren’t collapsing at that size, this animal—especially if it’s endothermic and has a high metabolism—would be eating all the time. I don’t know if there are enough people in the ‘Game of Thrones’ universe to feed this animal. It would also have a lot of excrement, which, I don’t know if Daenerys will be able to handle it.”

What would be more realistic? “Having a flying animal that has a wingspan of 35 feet – that’s what I see that has precedents in nature. The largest flying animal was Quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur with a wingspan of 35 feet. But it also weighed, from what we understand, probably only 0.2 tons. There are no reptiles that have powered flight, but we do have flying lizards like Draco volans, which means “flying dragon”. This animal has essentially taken its ribs and lengthened them a lot so that they come out the sides and there is webbing between them. They usually keep them by your side, but when they’re ready to outrun a predator or go to another tree, you fire them out and they can glide through the air on their ribs, and they do a pretty good job.” “Then there are also flying snakes, which is really wonderful. A lot of people don’t think of flying snakes, but there are gliding snakes like Chrysopelea that do something similar. Their ribs can also spread out and they essentially create this wing with their body where it is concave on the belly.This allows them to catch the wind and they essentially glide through the air using their tail like an oar.They can travel great distances in the process.They also fly frogs using the webbing between their hands and feet use as little parachutes.”

Skip to 2:14 to see the Snek fly. The moongate wouldn’t stop this guy.

How about fire breathing? And assuming dragons could create fire, how would they avoid melting their own maw? “There are no real animals that are flame resistant or flame immune. There are animals that can withstand super high temperatures like sea vents – certain worms can live in those really crazy heat environments, but that’s no precedent for animals that can withstand really high temperatures, there’s no precedent for an animal to have an open fire for any length of time flame resists. But again, there could be some kind of flame retardant slime, or the dragon spitting something that then turns on fire after it’s out of its mouth. I think having a spitting cobra kite would be pretty cool because that would cause some problems for the humans underneath even if it’s not fire. There are also other animals that can shoot things out of their bodies. There’s the lizards that can shoot blood out of their eyes, and there’s actually a gecko, Strophurus, that can shoot those goosebumps out of its tail. It’s not toxic or anything. It’s just kind of gross. But something exists in nature.”

Impressive, if disgusting.

The eggs that hatched Daenerys’ dragons are eons old. Could they still be viable? “Reptile eggs need a certain temperature and humidity level to be viable. That’s a problem with climate change: you have these animals that need that exact temperature to hatch, and if the animal lays an egg in the same spot and it gets warmer, the eggs can become unusable. Dragon eggs would probably have those conditions too , where it needs to be the right temperature, the right humidity, so it would be very difficult to let an egg sit for that long. You would have to take very good care of those eggs so that they would be alive when Daenerys got them.” What about Fire hatching them?” There are plants that can resist fire and they have seeds that essentially need a fire stimulus for the seed to sprout. So there is, but as far as I know there is no such thing as a flame egg in reptiles .” What do you do when you’re not thinking about dragons? “I’m a graduate student in the Blackburn Lab at the Florida Museum on Natural History, focusing my research on the morphology and evolution of frogs. I’m looking just tackled the functional morphology of burrowing frogs. We are CT scanning all of these organisms and uploading them online so everyone has access to the 3D file of the skeleton as part of oVert TCN and it’s really great because you can ask questions about the evolution of all frogs. It’s great to have this huge dataset and see questions like: How does the shape of the arm change in burrowing versus swimming versus walking frogs?

Recently had the pleasure of CT scanning a male Conraua beccarii with @DrScanley – these amazing frogs are found in Ethiopia and the males are known for having huge heads! Look at the curve of that upper jaw! pic.twitter.com/RXOcp1DglC – Rachel Keeffe (@rmkeeffe) May 30, 2018

Why do we need to know? “As an evolutionary biologist, it is important to understand how things change over time so that we can predict how things will develop in the future and also learn how best to care for animals today. That’s what we want to ensure in conservation We know what each animal needs when we protect it, and for many of these frogs we don’t know anything at all. Also, some of this work has implications for learning how things move and how things move best in biomechanics, there are applications to making digging robots. Hopefully one day we can build a robotic kite, and then we’ll understand exactly where the limitations of flight lie.” Why UF? “Florida is great for many reasons, especially as a herpetologist. I think there are about 99 species of herps here in Gainesville alone. Add to that the fact that UF has amazing facilities. I work a lot with CT scans and the CT scanner here allows me to collect data fairly easily, which is a great blessing and allows me to learn these new ways of collecting data that I couldn’t learn anywhere else.”

There are dragons – and not only in Game of Thrones.

In honor of the Chinese New Year, a celebration of mythical dragons, Weird Animal Question of the Week asked, “What are some of the most dazzling dragons in real life?”

Ruby Seadragon

We wear red when we want to stand out, but for the Ruby Seadragon, “it’s a stealth tactic at depth,” says Josefin Stiller, who recently helped film the dragon for the first time in Western Australia. (Related: “Rare Ruby Seadragon Filmed on Video for the First Time.”)

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Because “red is the first color of the spectrum to be filtered out,” these fish appear black underwater, which helps them hide from predators, says Stiller, a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego.

Their masquerade is probably why they don’t have the same leafy camouflage appendages that the Leaf Sea Dragon and the Common or Herbaceous Sea Dragon blend into.

Also unlike their cousins, male ruby ​​sea dragons carry their babies – but under their tails, not in their bellies.

Blue dragon sea snail

This beautiful little nudibranch, only 2.3 inches long, is full of surprises.

“They spend their lives swimming upside down on the sea surface, swallowing air to stay afloat,” Ángel Valdés, a sea snail specialist at California State Polytechnic University, said via email.

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This keeps them close to their prey, including the famously venomous Portuguese warship. (See the incredible photos of nudibranchs in National Geographic Magazine.)

The blue dragon steals stinging cells called nematocysts from warships and stores them in specialized organs in the tips of their cerata, or wings – which may explain their name.

When threatened by a predator, the slug discharges the stinging cells, says Valdés.

Pink dragon centipede

Wearing pink doesn’t mean you’re a pushover.

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Scientists discovered the pink dragon centipede in 2007 in the Greater Mekong region of Thailand. (Related Photos: “Cyanid Centipede, Giant Spider Among New Species.”)

Thought to live only in the limestone caves of this region, the colorful arthropod defends itself by producing cyanide. Not exactly fire, but close.

Komodo dragon

This one could actually eat you.

Weighing in at over 300 pounds, the Komodo Dragon slays prey with a combination of foul venom and ripping fangs that quickly send that venom into the victim’s flesh. (Related: “Komodo dragon kills with poison, researchers find.”)

There is an animal brave enough to take on them.

“Komodo dragons’ main predators are other Komodo dragons,” says Robert Espinoza of California State University, Northridge, via email.

Because adults eat juveniles, very few juveniles are seen outdoors. smart kids.

Black Dragonfish

This evil alien-like beauty was once a clumsy teenager. In the larval stage, the female black dragonfish has eye stalks that can reach half its body length, allowing it to see further down. As she grows, her eyes recede and she gets huge teeth; Rows of light-producing organs lining the body; and a barbel, a whisker-like chin protrusion.

In comparison, males are tiny and toothless, only living long enough to mate.

Flying dragons

These lizards of Southeast Asia and India are pretty well camouflaged—until they spread their “wings.”

Flying kites soar through the treetops with their colorful patagia, wing-like structures supported by their ribs, says Jim McGuire, a flying lizard specialist at the University of California, Berkeley, via email.

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Each of the 50 known flying kite species has Patagonia with different hues and patterns.

Patagia is used to shuttle and escape predators, and also helps male flying dragon reptiles to show themselves to females during courtship.

Have a question about the weird and wild world? Tweet me, message me in the comments, or find me on Facebook. Weird Animal Question of the Week answers your questions every Saturday.

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“This is not a new discovery,” says Mark Bonta, an assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State Altoona, when asked about the hawks. But it is significant. It’s only relatively recently that Westerners have come to understand what Aboriginal people have known for tens of thousands of years: Some bird species in Australia’s Northern Territory, collectively known as ‘firehawks’, can intentionally spread fire in order to make food gathering easier. They carry sticks that are already burning from a wildfire and drop them in another area, creating a new fire. When small mammals and insects try to escape the flames and smoke, they become easy prey for the raptors.

A new article in the Journal of Ethnobiology by Bonta, Robert Gosford, Dick Eussen, Nathan Ferguson, Erana Loveless, and Maxwell Witwer discusses the evidence supporting phoenix hawks, as does an article just published in the New York Times. There is much skepticism about the birds using fire as a tool. “In Western thinking, fire is the only thing animals don’t have. Fire made us human,” says Bonta. “We assume that ignition and combustibility are self-evident. There’s a lot to be said for what fire has done for us – incredible weapons, firearms, the ability to start fire. Fire has given us power over other animals.” (For more information on fire, see Stephen J. Pyne, a leading authority on fire, in a TED talk on “How Fire Shapes Everything”).

Although the focus is on northern Australia, bird fire behavior may not be limited by species or geography. Birds known as fire hawks include the black kite, whistling kite, and brown hawk; Black kites are also found in Asia and Africa. Bonta also notes some “old reports from Texas and Florida” of Caracaras setting fires.

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Of course, ongoing bird research helps answer questions. “There’s a lot to find out,” says Bonta, citing recent results. “We only learned in 2016 that the neurons of birds are packed differently. You’re a lot smarter than we thought. We are just beginning to understand bird memories. Crows’ problem-solving skills are amazing. There are many behaviors when using tools.”

One of the reasons Westerners may have trouble accepting the concept of the Phoenix Hawk, Bonta says, is our lack of connection to our environment: “Westerners have done little except isolate us from nature,” he says. But those who care about connecting with our planet in some way—he cites turkey hunters as an example—“have tremendous knowledge because they are interacting with a species. When you go into conservation, [this knowledge] is even more important.” Indigenous people “do not see themselves as superior to, or separate from, animals. They are walking stores of knowledge.”

But empirical evidence is in the eye of the beholder. While Aboriginal people have known about Phoenix Hawks for a very long time, there is still no video evidence to ‘prove’ this to Western scientists. Bonta hopes that the renewed attention to the subject will “motivate other people to go into the field and study this. That should inspire.” Maybe even make a fire?

Komodo dragons are living, breathing dragons, even if they don’t breathe fire. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t some really cool — and wild — reptiles. Komodo dragons are the largest lizards and there are 3,000 species! They live on just five islands in southeastern Indonesia. And while they may not be big enough to knock down a castle, the Komodo dragon is quite large — adult males can reach 10 feet in length. They are ready, willing, and able to protect themselves with their 60+ sharp teeth and long, sharp claws.

species of amphibians

The fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) is a species of salamander that is widespread in Europe.

It is black with varying degrees of yellow spots or stripes; Some specimens can be almost entirely black, while others are dominated by yellow. Reds and oranges can sometimes appear, either replacing or mixing with the yellow, depending on the subspecies.[2] This bright coloration is very noticeable and deters predators by honestly signaling their toxicity (aposematism).[3] Fire salamanders can have very long lifespans; one specimen lived for more than 50 years in the Museum König, a German natural history museum.

Habitat, behavior and diet[ edit ]

Fire salamanders live in the forests of Central Europe and are more common in hilly areas. They prefer deciduous forests as they like to hide in foliage and around moss-covered logs. For the development of the larvae, they need small streams or ponds with clean water in their habitat. Whether on land or in the water, fire salamanders are inconspicuous. They spend much of their time hiding under wood or other objects. They are active in the evening and at night, but also during the day on rainy days.[4]

The diet of the fire salamander consists of various insects, spiders, earthworms and snails, but they also occasionally eat newts and young frogs. In captivity, they eat crickets, mealworms, waxworms, and silkworm larvae. Small prey is caught in the area of ​​the vomeric teeth or by the posterior half of the tongue, to which prey attaches. It weighs about 40 grams. The fire salamander is one of the largest salamanders in Europe[5] and can grow to 15 to 25 centimeters in length.[6]

reproduction[ edit ]

Males and females look very similar, except during the breeding season when the most noticeable difference is a swollen gland around the male’s orifice. This gland produces the spermatophore, which carries a sperm pack at its tip. The courtship takes place on land. After the male becomes aware of a potential mate, he confronts her and blocks her path. The male rubs them with his chin to show his mating interest, then crawls under them and grasps their front legs with his own in the amplexus. He puts a spermatophore on the ground and then tries to get the female’s cloaca in contact with it. If successful, the female will ingest the seed packet and her eggs will be internally fertilized. The eggs develop inside and the female deposits the larvae in a body of water as soon as they hatch. In some subspecies, the larvae continue to develop in the female until she gives birth to fully formed metamorphs. Breeding has not been observed in neotenic fire salamanders.

In captivity, females can keep the sperm long-term and later use the stored sperm to produce another clutch. This behavior has not been observed in the wild, likely due to the ability to obtain fresh sperm and the breakdown of stored sperm.[7]

Toxicity [ edit ]

Samandarin structure

The primary alkaloid toxin of the fire salamander, samandarin, causes severe muscle spasms and hypertension combined with hyperventilation in all vertebrates. The fire salamander’s venom glands are concentrated in specific areas of the body, particularly around the head and the dorsal skin surface. The colored parts of the animal’s skin usually coincide with these glands. Compounds in skin secretions can be effective against bacterial and fungal infections of the epidermis; some are potentially dangerous to human life.

Distribution[ edit ]

Video of a fire salamander in its natural habitat in Austria

Fire salamanders are found in most parts of southern and central Europe. They are most commonly found at altitudes between 250 meters (820 ft) and 1,000 meters (3,300 ft), only rarely below (up to 25 meters (82 ft) sporadically in northern Germany). In the Balkans or in Spain, however, they are often found at higher altitudes.

Subspecies [ edit ]

Several subspecies of the fire salamander are recognized. Most notable are the subspecies fastuosa and bernadezi, which are the only viviparous subspecies – the others are ovoviviparous.

S.s.alfredschmidt

P. s. Almanzoris

S.s. bejarae

S.s. Bernardezi

S. s. beschkovi

P. s. Crespoi

S. s. fastuosa (or bonalli) – yellow-striped fire salamander

(or ) – yellow-striped fire salamander S. s. gallaica – Galician fire salamander

– Galician fire salamander S. s. gigliolii

S. s. Morenika

S. s. Salamandra – spotted fire salamander, nominated subspecies

– spotted fire salamander, subspecies S. s. terrestris – barred fire salamander

– Barred fire salamander S. s. werneri

Some earlier subspecies have recently been recognized as species on genetic grounds.

Gallery [ edit ]

Orange morph

References[ edit ]