Dragon Anatomy

[R'enh and Mnoranth]

Dragon Anatomy

Endoskeleton:
Dragons are a boron based life form. While humans are carbon based, boron helps dragons to maintain a stronger skeletal system than humans. Earth animals were genetically altered to ingest boron from native plants and make it part of their muscles structure, specifically for a dragon's constant need to ingest boron. Much the same way we need to drink milk or take vitamins to keep enough calcium in our system for strong bones. Despite a dragon's size, their skeletons are strong enough and built to keep them comfortable standing both on hind legs and all fours. Most of the skeleton is also constructed of flexible plates that slide across one another. The bones that aren't plates are theorized as being hollow like an Earth avian's and contain just 'air', thus making the dragon lighter. But the theory is also countered that certain bones wouldn't contain the strength needed for draconic take offs and landings if they were hollow.

Their skeletons are designed for the stress and impact of take offs and landings. A modified ball and socket joint connect hips and legs. It's modified compared to ours just enough so that they generally never dislocate their knees when taking off and it helps absorb impact from landing, also preventing dislocated knees as well..

Rib cages, unlike our own, are rather large for the size of creature and compositely one giant plate of hollow bone. It's been stated that a dragon can double the size of it's chest when fully inflating it's lungs. With this in mind, it's assumed that the rib cage is not attached to the vertebrae like ours. This also lead to the idea that very strong ligaments, muscles and a rather large diaphragm control the rib cage and keep it in place.

Pernese dragons are designed with hands and feet more than claws. The hands where changed from the original dragonet's of two fingers and a thumb forming pincers style, to a penta-dactile design. Dragons' hands look much like a humans. The only difference is that their thumb isn't quite as opposable as ours. Meaning it rests higher up on the palm and functions much like a fifth finger rather than a thumb to wrap around things, though they can use it for this manner. As for dragon feet, they have four toes to a foot. The toes are proportionally shorter than the fingers are and with less range of motion. But since the size of dragon is large enough compared to prey, this does not hinder them from using their feet to catch prey should their hands miss. Both, hands and feet, have claw like nails. Very similar to felines, the toe claws are permanently in the 'out' position and the hand claws are supposed to be retractable. (This is stated in only one book so the truth of that holds to how ever someone interprets it) It would be assumed that these nails/claws continue to grow from a nail bed through out a dragon's life time but since their homes are made of stone, it's easily seen why filing them down hasn't ever been mentioned. This nail bed would be where the nails are nourished from. Also assuming the nature of feline or canine claws, a dragon's nail would not have nerve endings with-in the nail itself. That doesn't mean they couldn't feel by association with them though.

Now the wings could be considered the most complex part of a dragon's skeletal system. They could be looked at as modified arms but that doesn't give full glory to their design. But for understanding terms, the wing skeleton will be described as such. The wing shoulder looks like it would be a ball and socket joint like our normal shoulder but frankly needs the stability of a hinge joint held by muscles and ligament. A combination of both would seem mostly likely. A dragon needs the range of motion a ball and socket provides but the stability of a hinge joint. With that in mind, a dragon's shoulder blade for it's fore arms probably has a cup formation to hold the wing bone like a ball and socket and a substantial amount of muscles and ligaments connecting the wing bones to backbones, rib cage, and neck bones to provide enough support in all directions. In theory, there should be enough movement and support in the shoulder for a dragon to fold, flex, extend and furl their wings as described through out the books. Continuing out from the shoulder socket is one long, strong bone. It joins to another in a hinge fashion thus creating an elbow which bends sideways compared to an human's. From the elbow joint extends another long bone to the 'lub' of finger joints. Every dragon has a vestigial 'thumb' protruding from the 'lub'. There are a number of wing medicarples to manipulate the four wing fingers. Each of which have three joints like in human hands. Only the 'knuckle' joint isn't restricted in their 'palm' muscles which hold the primary hand bones. Each wing finger is held in place by a series of muscles and ligaments starting just below the 'elbow'. They run through the 'lub' and extend out the entire length of each wing finger, give the dragon very fine, detailed control of every bone in the wing.

A dragon's tail is more or less and extension of it's vertebrae. Since a dragon is rather comfortable setting on it's hind quarters. It's muscle structure, controlling the tail, would be much like a cat's. They would not 'sit' on their tails but rather their pelvic bone and tail muscles are designed to push the tail far enough out of the way to allow them to sit on thier pelvis rather than putting the weight of the body on the tail like a kangaroo.

Draconic muscles are described as being a shiny silvery-grey which gets darker when more ichor flow is prevalent. Their leg muscles are massive compared to many flight capable species but this is due to their style of obtaining flight, from the ground. Their wing shoulders thus would also be extraordinarily massive to provide enough strength in down strokes to achieve flight for the size of creature they are. Since their fore arms aren't as much a necessity as their wings and legs, the arms are shorter in length than the legs. The muscles are weaker in the arms than in the legs but they are still strong enough to support a dragon in a four legged walk. This length diffrence gives the dragon a ungainly hop-gallop when walking down on all fours. They prefer to stay on their hind quarters but this makes for very slow land travel compare to the ungraceful look of being on all four.

Exoskeleton:
A dragon does not truly have a metallic skin. Nor do they have scales or plates protecting their internal structure. A dragon's skin, or hide as is known, is completely hairless and naturally glossy thus aiding in the appearance of metallic colors. The amounts of nickle, cobalt, and iron in each individual dragon determines the color of their hide. Queens range from a pale yellow to antique gold. Bronzes normally are never truly bronze. They appear more a greenish gold that's supposed to vary only slightly in color but the occasional one is born as dark as a brown. While Browns can be as light as a leather tan and as rich as Klah. Blues and Greens come in every color each that is considered blue or green. Some are hard to distinguish between the other unless asked, while some have such vivid underlaying colors similar purple and yellow, it's undeniable wither a blue is blue or green is green.

The epidermis of a dragon serves the same purpose as a human's does. It protectes the vital organs from virus, bacteria and such. A dragon's hide is much thicker than a human's skin is but topical absorption is still possible. Thus allowing numbweed to be a very useful tool in dragon healing.

The only time a dragon will look like it is glowing, is when a female is approaching her mating cycle. Typically a green or gold will start to shine or 'glow' more the day before her mating cycle. This is not always the case. A distressed female may show the grey tinges of stress thus never hinting to her need to mate. The only way a male dragon's hide changes color is with stress and age. Stress greys or dulls the hide and age can darken most of the hide while turning points like muzzles and tail tips a wispy grey color.

Vital Organs:

Blood: A dragon does not have ' blood'. It has ichor. It flows through the body in veins and arteries carrying oxygen and other vital compounds through out the body just like blood. Dragon ichor is based on metal compounds similarly in style to humans. While ours is mostly iron, a dragon's is mostly copper thus when their skin flushes with color it will be more green instead of the pink or red humans turn. Ichor, like blood, helps maintain a stable body temperature. Which for dragon is about 35 degrees Celsius, humans it's about 37. These two facts make a dragon definitely a warm blooded creature. It's not dependant on an outside source to keep their bodies warm like reptilians. Though it's a well known fact that a favorite past time for a dragon is to sun.

While dragon healers know that the ichor is continuously circulated through the body like blood is in a humans; a heart contracting and expanding as it fills with ichor then pushes it through the body in arteries, veins and capillaries. What is not known is exactly how many hearts a dragon has. The typical lub-dub of a human heart is heard easily in a dragon, thus assuming they have four chamber hearts, but due to the fact it can be heard in multiple spots in a dragon's chest suggests multiple hearts. This could be attributed to their size. One heart controls only part of the body. Or do to the fact they spend a lot of time in different altitudes and pressures, a different heart might be needed to push the ichor of varying amounts of oxygen through out the body.

Lungs: A dragons lungs are located more in the back of their chest running along the underside of their dorsal section. Since a dragon's rib cage is not connected to the vertebrae, the diaphragm muscles is the only thing controlling a dragon's breath. They can swell their chest to nearly double it's size when the diaphragm pulls the lungs as far down as they can go. This is thought to help a dragon in high altitudes and to be able to produce strong enough breath to 'spit' the gas far enough from their bodies' before oxygen combusts it into flame. *See Second Stomach for more detail on breathing fire*

Mouth: Dragons do not have forked tongues. A distinct difference between them and their closest relatives, fire lizards. When dragons were designed by the first settlers, it was thought they'd be intelligent enough to speak if they were given a tongue that could manipulate sounds. While the intelligence surpasses expectations, the genetic disposition of fire lizards for some reason kept dragons from being able to speak like humans. Their mouths do salivate but it's only barely enough to ward of bacteria and virus. It's thought that if a dragon were to salivate as much as humans, the saliva would impede the processes the second stomach has on fire stone to produce the gas necessary for flame. The teeth of a dragon a surprisingly very strong. A perfect occurrence when being genetically made because dragons ended up with only one set of full teeth after losing their first set of baby teeth. Typically it's insanely hard for a dragon to break a tooth but age and in some cases, genetics, will take a toll on the teeth. Causing them to break eventually. Generally with the first broken tooth, a dragon team is either retired or given a flame thrower and flown only in low altitude wings but this happens, on average, only after the dragons 40th hatching day. They have sharp, well pointed and round canine teeth up front for killing and ripping into prey. While the back of the mouth is full of molars for the chewing of fire stone and meat.

Stomach and Second Stomach: The first stomach is for all intents and purposes, a normal stomach. It digests and processes food before passing it on to the intestines to be absorbed into the ichor stream. The second stomach on the other hand has no digestive track. It has one purpose. To digest phosphoreus bearing rock. This rock, when digested, is subsequently introduced to an acid the second stomach creates. The acid turns most of the rock into various gases that, when belched, will ignite upon coming into contact with enough oxygen. A dragon is taught early on how to concentrate on the second stomach for this purpose. A full grown dragon is capable of belching a continuous flame for up to three minutes and two to six meters in length. Though the typical need to sear thread is ten seconds and three meters. Once all the stone is digested and no more gas can be obtained from it, a dragon has to regurgitate the left over masses. It comes back up as a very smelly, grey ash. Weyrlings are trained to regurgitate this ash up into special pits just outside of Weyrs. Holders can use this ash as fertilizer for their crops so no Weyr is ever stunk out of home by piles of regurgitated ash.

Gold dragons inherently can not digest firestone into gas. They were genetically designed not to. Being the egg bears of the speices, gold dragons were too valuable to risk in Thread Fall. But strong willed women prevailed. Queens now fly fall with their weyrwoman wielding a flame thrower. Though in present day Pern, it is unknown that queens can digest the stone into a pasty grey muck without effecting their reproductive system. Tradition and belief lead to the myth that if a Queen dragon were to digest stone she would be rendered infertile do to the fact that green dragons are infertile by nature. The association with a flaming green to a reproducing queen is how the belief that firestone leads to infertility was born. Though in fact it is not true.

Eyes: Dragon eyes are wonderfully and beautifully designed. Some might be disgusted by this but the simplest way to describe a dragon's eyes is to look at a fly's eye. The eye is multi faceted (compound) and protrudes from the eye socket to almost eliminating blind spots. The benefits of having multi faceted lens is in the amount of recepters in the eye which is substantially increased compaired to a single lens eye. The magnitude of receptors obviously lets dragon see things diffrently but the biggest benefit is the increases sensitivity to movement. The lightest flicker of movement is easily decernable to dragons were in humans, we just wouldn't seem to notice. This is exceptionally helpful with needing to spot Thread in varing kinds of conditions.

There are no lashes to protect the eye. Instead a multi lid system and well developed eye ridge protect the eye from most danger. The first lid to close over a dragon's eye is a transparent inner lid. This single lid closes over a eye from the outside corner and completely envelops the eye. A dragon only suffers minor visibility changes with the transparent inner lid. It protects the eye during Thread Fall and is clear enough to provide mostly clear views when underwater. The second middle lid is thick enough to prevent sight but thin enough to let light through. It's a second form a protection to harmful objects such as Thread that's still alive though charred and dying. This lid set closes almost up/down but almost a 45% angle. The final outer and most protective set of lids is a thick layer of epidermis. It's primarily used only to completely shut out light for sleeping but it serves as a form of protection as well and better so than the other two combined.

One of the most intriguing aspect of a dragon's eye is the appearance of 'whirling' colors. The color changes in accordance to the emotion of the dragon. This is a result of different hormonal flows in the ichor stream. The whirling appearance is from the blood flow. The more intense the emotion, the more blood is supplied to necessary organs and the eyes are always included as part of necessary organs. A multitude of emotions can be displayed in the eye at one time. More often than not, it'll be coinciding emotions. Like lust/hunger and danger/fear.

Primary colors and corresponding colors
blue/green = contentment
yellow = fear
orange/red = anger
red = hunger
white = danger
gray = pain
purple = love/mating lust


Other Vital Organs:

In completing the look of the inside of a dragon, all other organs that are part of an avian or reptile probably exist in dragons. Obviously this includes such organs as bladders, intestines, livers, kidneys, gull bladders, sex organs, and a wide variety of glands that regulate hormones. The placement of all the organs is questionable, again due to the fact a dragon will never be dissected. The sphincter of a dragon is located underneath the base of it's tail just below the sex organs, of which are concealed in tight pouches. Some like to think dragons 'go' while in between but the laws of physics can't explain how that's possible. But neither can physics explain teleportation. In the instances that a sick dragon or Weyrling is incapable of relieving themselves in between, the rider is responsible for cleaning up after their dragon.

More Information:

Senses: Dragons have all five primary senses that the general population of animals have. Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, and Smell. But one can consider Telepathy, Telekinesis and Teleporting as secondary senses like a Jacob's Organ is for snakes.

Sight: The structure of the eye is covered in a previous section. The amount of sight a dragon is capable of is far superior to a human's. They can see in approximately 315 degrees around them. The further the object is away the more it can be in a dragons peripheral vision and is still easily seen. A dragon's blind spot occurs from the middle of the back of the skull and consumes the 45 degrees behind them that are not visible in their direct line of vision. Their distance is unrivaled on Pern. The farthest distance is unknown but upwards of two miles can be seen to a dragon as clear as ten feet is to them.

Hearing: Dragon's have modified hearing since they don't have ears. The protruding knobs, set just behind the eyes, act as sensory feelers. The knobs are sensitive enough to detect the vibrations in the air that is speech and sound. The knobs are also attuned to light as well as sound along with being ultra sensitive the to empathic waves created with thought. In this way dragons understand human speech.

Taste: There is little need for taste. While a dragon can taste to some degree, the genetic code for the range a human has was left out to leave room for more vital things such as sight and higher intelligence.

Smell: Unfortunately a dragon's sense of smell is even less than that of a humans. While they can formulate the detection of a new and unfamiliar smell, that's more a result of brain power than sense. The object has to be relatively close if not under their noses for them to sense it. So where as a human is disgusted by the stench of firestone, a dragon does not have the sensitivity required to be offended by the odors.

Touch: A variable sense. It's completely up to genetics as to the extent of a dragon's sensitivity, just as it is with humans. They are particularly sensitive on their bellies, eye ridges and the sensory knobs on their head. Everything else varies from dragon to dragon.

Now for the secondaries: Teleporting, Telepathy and Telekinesis

Teleporting: Also known as '/betweening/'. It's the instantaneous transfer of self or object from one point to another. Which to modern day Pern is how it's looked at. The settlers had the capability to track time of such transfers and found out the transaction actually takes eight seconds no matter where on Pern you are transferring to. It's an natural ability within dragons, fire lizards and even whers. They can all transfer objects of their choosing but all said objects have to be touched by the creature. Whers and dragons can both teleport more than their own body weight in '/betweening/, fire lizards can not. Whers also have the extra sensitivity to teleport things just touching them while dragons and flits have to have control of or be ridden by the objects they are transferring with them. Another portion of the '/betweening/ capability is the 'timing' it between. This is when a dragon moves through time as well as distance in a teleporting. Here in Dragon Weyr, the ability is not available to any dragon without Admin permission.

Telepathy: The ability to speak directly into the mind of another. Dragons are born capable to talk to anyone of their choosing, but at that moment of time, they are only out to seek their rider whom will be the one to hear from the dragon the most in it's life time. The settlers where thankful when genetically creating dragons that despite the mishap with their tongues not being able to formulate words, that dragons were still beyond intelligent enough to speak words to their riders rather than just pictures as a flit or wher does. This ability has limits. Distance plays a big factor. The stronger the dragon is empathically, the father the distance they can talk to someone through.

Telekinesis: The ability to move objects without touching them. This is an ability available to dragons after time and patience has refined the need for it but Dragon Weyr refrains from the use of it all together though it might come into play should the Admins choose so at some point in the future.