Hello Internet - and welcome back to the most inquisitive channel on YouTube - Life’s
Biggest Questions - the place not marked on any map - the place where here be dragons.
What’s going on guys - as per usual I’ll be your disembodied floating voice Jack Finch
- as we take to the skies, soar across a smouldering battlefield - and gleefully roll a natural
20 - as we excitedly ask the fantastical question - What If Dragons Were Real?
Roll the clip.
Be it four limbs or six, there’s actually a hell of a lot of science that goes into
the fictional fleshing out of these great winged lords of the sky. Which comes with
the territory really, considering that our civilization has been obsessed with the idea
of dragons ever since we crawled out of the primordial soup and span a few yarns around
a toasty campfire. Be it the mushussu of ancient Mesopotamia, Apep of Egypt, the Leviathan
of the Hebrew Bible, the Wyvern, the Lernaean Hydra of Ancient Greece, Jormungandr - Nidhogg
and Fafnir of Norse mythology - or of course, the gold hoarding dragon from Beowulf - it’s
safe to say that we’ve been pretty obsessed with our scaly, winged overlords for quite
some time. But what if they existed outside of the realms of fiction - manifested on our
shared physical plane - what if dragons were real? Well, let’s find out.
Before we do that though - you know how it is by now - if you’re a fan of this video,
dragons, dragon slayers - or just Life’s Biggest Questions in general - then please,
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with the show.
Now before we leap into the bulk of this alternate reality - we really need to footnote this
burning theoretical question with a small segway. First - could a dragon possibly exist?
Back in the day - when humanity was but a mere toddler stumbling their way across the
planet - ancient humans inevitably unearthed massive bones - dragon bones, giant reptilian
skeletons unlike the anatomy of any known lizard, snake or amphibian. Of course, in
hindsight we know that these were the relics of dinosaurs - ancient beasts that dominated
the planet for millenia - through the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous ages. But it germinated
the idea of great winged conquerors of the sky - an idea so ubiquitous that the myth
was shared in every corner of the planet, from Hawaii to Iceland - to New Zealand - before
any of these civilizations were even aware of each other.
If dragons were real - then our answer would first be found in the building blocks of evolution.
It’s interesting - considering whichever culture dragons happen to appear in - they’re
always reptilian. It would be easy then to look back through fossil records and find
evidence of such mammoth creatures. The Titanoboa, an ancient, giant snake that measured in at
a staggering forty feet - with a body as thick as a man’s waist. If we look back through
Norse mythology - then the idea of a giant snake - a wyrm - is prevalent in fulfilling
the role of the dragon. But - that’s not it - is it? - because when we think dragon,
we’re not thinking massive giant snakes floating through the sky - we’re thinking
of a hulking, four legged creature with bright, leathery wings bursting from it’s shoulders
- roaring fire and gathering storms with a mere flap of it’s deadly appendages. We
imagine a creature that - from an anatomical perspective - should not exist.
When applied to winged creatures - the square cube law states that when an object undergoes
a proportional increase in size - it’s new surface area is proportional to the square
of the multiplier, and it’s new volume is proportional to the cube of the multiplier.
In short - for a creature supposedly as large as a dragon, it would physically be very difficult
- and highly unlikely for them to fly. However - we could take the winged pterosaur as an
example - a dinosaur of similar size to our dragon - which utilized hollow bones in order
to take flight with their massive frames. It means a trade off in physical durability
- but alright, that’ll do - I guess. When we look at evolution though, animals with
backbones have evolved wings on three separate occasions - in birds, bats and pterosaurs
- all of which have membranous wings as forelimbs. It means that evolution gives a creature two
options. You either have wings - or arms - but never both.
So - in that case, it’s highly likely that our theoretical dragons would be four limbed
creatures - much more similar to the wyvern - and the fictional adaptations of the Song
of Ice and Fire dragons - rather than the likes of say, Onyxia or Nefarian from the
Warcraft lore. Despite all of this though, whichever physical presentation of a dragon
we’d get - things are looking pretty terrifying back on the ground. We’ve fleshed out the
physicalities of a dragon actually existing - and how they’d be presented in our theoretical
timeline - but how are things fairing for young humanity, facing the fact there’s
terrifying gigantic wyverns in the sky. And to be honest, actually - I’m feeling pretty
confident. It comes down to two things, though - would dragons be friends - or our immortal
foe?
It’s safe to say a creature so large would have a formidable lifespan - and would in
all likelihood have a considerably large brain. Dragons of mythology are always highly intelligent.
Smaug, Beowulf’s dragon - or the ancient Long dragon’s of China - creatures outside
the squabbling of humanity. In one scenario - it’s possible that a creature of such
intelligence would see humanity as a highly capable pet - much like how canines evolved
alongside our civilization - if that’s the case, If Dragons Were Real - we’d either
live a life of servitude - or enjoy a more peaceful coexistence - and take to the skies
as dragon riders, building our societies around the needs of our scaly overlords, much like
the Targaryens and wider nation of Valyria in George R. R. Martin’s A Song Of Ice and
Fire.
However - if the legends were true, and the young human race perceived a highly intelligent
dragon as an ever looming threat - a creature lurking in a cave, belching fire, hoarding
gold and kidnapping princesses - then inevitably, eventually - we’d hunt them all down and
slay them. If Dragons Were Real - they’d have faded long into the halls of fiction,
eradicated by brave heroes with swords and shields - until eventually - they were nothing
more than an epic story, told around a roaring campfire.
Well - unfortunately folks, that’s all we’ve got time for in today’s video - cheers for
sticking around all the way to the end. Make sure to hit that thumbs up button and show
some love in the comment section down below. As always, I’ve been your host Jack Finch
- you’ve been watching Life’s Biggest Questions - and until next time, you take
it easy.