Subject:
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Re: Enter the Dragon... or a fun teaser part deux
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.castle
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Date:
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Sat, 14 Apr 2001 19:50:42 GMT
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Viewed:
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543 times
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In lugnet.castle, John Radtke writes:
> In lugnet.castle, Anthony Sava writes:
> > Feel like seeing another pic? Check it out again. I've added a picture to
> > show just how big the dragon is.
> >
> > http://www.geocities.com/savatheaggie/dragon/tease.html
> >
> > --Anthony
>
> One question for you - what does this monster eat? No population of people
> or domesticated cattle could support the daily appetite it would require.
> Got a herd of buffalo with a head count in the millions somewhere nearby?
>
> John
> #388
HAH! You think you can stump me on this one, well let's just see who's
stumped.
TO answer your question, we must first look at the biological requirements of
the dragon. Now, most people see dragons lying on their horde of gold,
guarding it. Also, the dragon can seem to have bursts of energy, chasing down
its prey. This would make it seem that dragons have the ability to change
their metebolic rates to suit their needs, much like most preditory mammals.
Also, a dragon would seem to be an ambush preditor, like a lion or a crocodile.
Lieing in wait till the moment is right and then charging. A dragon with
wings would most likely swoop down, grab its prey and fly off again.
Most raptors do not falp their wings much, except to take off. The usually
glide. A dragon of this size would most likely have to do the same, and given
that my dragon is roughly the size of a 747, flight IS theoretically possible,
granted the creature would have to obtain considerable speed.
So, we know now that the dragon doesn't spend much energy except to hunt and
defend its horde of gold, and with a variable metabolic rate, it doesn't
needlessly waste energy while it lies in wait. But because of the scaley
nature of the beast, and its superstructure, it would only be fair to say that
the dragon lies somewhere inbetween reptiles and mammals on the evolutionary
ladder, much like dinosaurs.
Ok, so the dragon is like a dionsaur. Well, we know that a 30 foot dinosaur,
like the Allosaurus, would need about 200 lbs of meet a week to survive.
Given that a lego man is roughly 5 studs high, we can get a rough guesstamet
from that. Now the picture I took with my knight in the picture, my knight's
character is a little less than six feet tall. With his helm, he is, and is
also just about 5 studs tall (with a lego brick on end sitting next to him.
So, knowing this, we can say that for ever 5 studs long, my dragon gains 6 feet
in length.
So, my dragon is 154 studs long. Apply basic algebra and you come up with my
dragon being 184.8 feet long.
185 feet for the sake of argument, even thought that is counting the spikes on
the end of its tail, I'll STILL give that to you.
OK, so the dragon is 185 feet long. Since it is like a dinosaur, we can then
expand the 30 foot carnisaur to the 185 feet length. Porpotionally, the
carnisaur at 185 feet would need rougly 1234 lbs of meat a week to survive.
Unfortunately, we cannot use that number, because we cannot use porportions
like that, the dragon gains different metabolic needs as it gets bigger.
So, for the sake of arguement, lets TRIPLE the amount. Granted, she probably
wouldnt need THAT much, but lets say the dragon is gluttonous. Ok, so triple
1234 lbs of meat is 3702 lbs of meat. We'll continue with 3700 just to make
it easy.
Ok, so thats 3700 lbs of meat a week, thats 192,400 lbs of meat a year.
Thats a lot of meat.
However, the average cow in the US weighs 900 lbs.
Let us assume that the dragon lives in an unpopulated area, where wild heards
roam. For the sake of argument, let us use the example of the Amercian Bison,
otherwise misnamed as the Buffalo. (Its not called the buffalo, its the
American Bison, the Buffalo is a European creature, but the settlers saw a
resemblance and the name stuck).
In Amercia, the american bison roamed in great heards of over 2 million heads.
Let us say, again for the sake of arguement, that only one sixth of the
population was of breading age, and only produced one calf every year.
That's a positive population birth rate of 300,000 possible babies born every
year. The population's death rate is unkown, but for the sake of argument let
us say that it is 3/4s that of the birth rate, since the amercian landscape
more than supported these large heards. So thats a net population growth of
75,000 head a year. OK, let us also assume that the dragon has no effect on
this first, theoretical death rate.
The american bison is larger than the average cow, and thus could reach weights
of up to 1200 lbs.
The dragon needs 192,400 lbs of meat a year to survive.
That is roughly 160 american bison every year, WELL below the net population
growth of the heard. In fact the dragon could double her already high amount
of food intake and not even barely dent the heard's growth rate.
IN FACT.... 46 dragons of my dragons size could live off of the heard and the
heard would STILL have a positive population growth.
So there you go, not only is it possible for my dragon to surive, but it could
thrive, and have parties and invite friends over.
--Anthony
http://www.geocities.com/savatheaggie/legohome.html
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Enter the Dragon... far too long...
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| I honestly don’t know who has more time on their hands! ‘You,’ for writing that essay. Or ‘me,’ for reading the entire page? Either way… i'd say it’s a grand (1)misappropriation of time. -R (1) Misappropriation, along with antidisestablishmentarisms (...) (24 years ago, 14-Apr-01, to lugnet.castle)
| | | Re: Enter the Dragon... or a fun teaser part deux
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| (...) Uh oh... details time... [I love these, sorry to nitpick, but it just got me thinking] :) Just to be 'fairer' on length, avg. people are 5'6" (men/women/ethnicity/etc). Now, a way back in Medieval times, people weren't very healthy-- and (...) (24 years ago, 14-Apr-01, to lugnet.castle)
| | | Re: Enter the Dragon... or a fun teaser part deux
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| (...) Wasn't trying to stump you - I just wanted to know ;) I think Dave got most of my additional thoughts already... (...) It would also require a whole lot of energy to grow to that size. (...) You also can't use that number because it's not (...) (24 years ago, 15-Apr-01, to lugnet.castle)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Enter the Dragon... or a fun teaser part deux
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| (...) One question for you - what does this monster eat? No population of people or domesticated cattle could support the daily appetite it would require. Got a herd of buffalo with a head count in the millions somewhere nearby? John #388 (24 years ago, 13-Apr-01, to lugnet.castle)
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