Evolutionary Explanations for Dragon Firebreathing: Interesting uses of indigestion
This is a question I've been thinking about for a while now.
Dragons are, by all observances related to the reptile family, (or maybe lizards) either way these are cold blooded animals. Common places to see dragons are on mountain tops, flying high in the sky, "from the North" etc. Reptiles are cold blooded, and these are large reptiles. So I wondered: How would one explain the 'evolution' of fire breathing?
I've also come up with an answer, which I will post, but I wanted to see how it would stack up with answers given by the imaginative bunch here.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/11650. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Fire breathing developed as a way to help raise their young.
Being reptilian, dragons lay eggs, but eggs need warmth to mature.
Because dragons are solitary creatures, and because dragons will eat other dragons eggs at every opportunity, and male dragons will consume their own eggs if given the chance, female dragons do not have anyone to share nest sitting duties with. And since dragons spend a lot of time in cold areas like caves, mountains and such, it was really hard for them to get away to hunt during breeding season.
Like other reptiles, proto dragons had chemical glands in their mouths containing poison and other chemicals, and over time these chemicals developed combinations that would react to each other to produce heat. The proto dragon would use these chemicals to warm the rocks around the eggs so they could get away to hunt, and since they didn't have to fast during egg laying season they became bigger and stronger than other dragons.
Over time these chemicals became more and more reactive until combustion would occur when they mixed.
This is the major reason why dragons from tropical areas are smaller and don't breath fire. See komodo dragon as an example of this. They have the venom glands of their northern, cold weather cousins, but because of the climate they never needed to develop fire breathing.
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