(no subject)
A prior post regarding the biology of dragons has made me think about some things regarding them.
From what I remember, Inheritance!Dragons keep on growing throughout their life. Apparently some were the size of small hills.
That's cool and all, but exactly how much would a dragon EAT? Considering that, since they're ever-growing and warm-blooded into the bargain, the simple answer is a LOT of meat. I don't know how to specifically calculate dietary requirements, but I get the feeling that the amount of meat a hill-sized dragon would need to simply survive would be able to completely exterminate a forest of large prey such as deer.
And how many dragons were there? We don't get a specific number, but considering the dragon riders numbered most likely in the hundreds, that meant a lot of dragons. And, if I recall correctly, someone calculated Alagaesia to be about the size of Germany. I'm curious about how an area of that size, with the commonest animals not much larger than a large deer, supports that high a population of gigantic carnivores, whose needs as carnivores are compunded by their metabolism (warm-blooded, by all accounts of dragons in the bricks), their long life, and their eternal growth.
I'm getting this image of Alagaesia as a ravaged ecosystem, which is recovering thanks to the mass depletion of dragon numbers.
On a similiar note, I was reading Secrets of Deltora, one of the companion books to the rather good Deltora Quest series, and apparently the author had considered the very same problem presented here, as the dragons in Deltora bred only once or twice in their 500-year lifespans, to prevent overpopulation (this breeding rate, incidentally, comes back to haunt them when the Shadow Lord begins to actively exterminate them).
From what I remember, Inheritance!Dragons keep on growing throughout their life. Apparently some were the size of small hills.
That's cool and all, but exactly how much would a dragon EAT? Considering that, since they're ever-growing and warm-blooded into the bargain, the simple answer is a LOT of meat. I don't know how to specifically calculate dietary requirements, but I get the feeling that the amount of meat a hill-sized dragon would need to simply survive would be able to completely exterminate a forest of large prey such as deer.
And how many dragons were there? We don't get a specific number, but considering the dragon riders numbered most likely in the hundreds, that meant a lot of dragons. And, if I recall correctly, someone calculated Alagaesia to be about the size of Germany. I'm curious about how an area of that size, with the commonest animals not much larger than a large deer, supports that high a population of gigantic carnivores, whose needs as carnivores are compunded by their metabolism (warm-blooded, by all accounts of dragons in the bricks), their long life, and their eternal growth.
I'm getting this image of Alagaesia as a ravaged ecosystem, which is recovering thanks to the mass depletion of dragon numbers.
On a similiar note, I was reading Secrets of Deltora, one of the companion books to the rather good Deltora Quest series, and apparently the author had considered the very same problem presented here, as the dragons in Deltora bred only once or twice in their 500-year lifespans, to prevent overpopulation (this breeding rate, incidentally, comes back to haunt them when the Shadow Lord begins to actively exterminate them).