Mountain sized colossal animal--could it survive, and could it move it's body around?

The question is in the title, but I have bolded the main details to reality-check. I hope that makes it easier to read.

Details: I had the idea of a fantasy/sci-fi animal that never stops growing, and is incredibly long lived. I was playing around with the idea of a cold blooded animal in an extremely cold (say, about -40 Celsius) environment. I'm of the opinion that after a certain amount of growth it and at such cold temperatures, it will inevitably lose the ability to walk around, though for the sake of the story lets say that its muscles do not atrophy, like those of polar bears, and that given the right circumstances, it could begin to slide its massive way across the tundra.

It has a heating organ that produces heat in response to the animal eating food; the increased heat stimulating growth. There is a civilization of humans who ritualistically feed these creatures over 100s of years until they grow to be the size of mountains, which shelter their human villages from the cold.

Can you see any physical limitations that cannot be overlooked when designing such a beast?

As an idea of where this is going, say that as human society advances, global warming or a nuclear disaster increases temperatures in the area and these huge creatures the size of mountains awake. Then, through a combination of organic compounds produced by their bodies which sublimate and become volatile/flammable at temperatures above -20 Celsius, and the excessive heat produced by heating organs which never evolved to turn off, these colossal fire-breathing mountains (i.e. dragons) wreak havoc on an unsuspecting humanity.

posted almost 5 years ago

doe‭

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