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Artwork (Traditional) / Fantasy
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This is for my watchers who are dragon enthusiasts. On the untouched world in my mind, where dragons evolved as a secondary offshoot of the dinosaur line (parallel evolution from birds), the plains dragon are omnivores that don't breathe fire or fly. They run in small (10-12) member herds (called "plates") until the females become gravid (pregnant) at which time they go to ground and chase the other members of their plate away. They stay with the young, which hatch comparatively ill adapted to life in a well organized plate, for up to three months, wherein the mother hunts and guards the young at turns. After this period of isolation, the mother has to fight her way back into the plate. If she succeeds, her offspring, two to four of them, are eagerly accepted and become communal children of the plate. At this stage, they begin to hunt for themselves, supplementing their kills with those of any plate member willing to share.
Anyway, this lady is in the beginning stage of her isolation period. The eggs should come within the next week.
Image and concept © 2009, J. Ehrenhaft.
Anyway, this lady is in the beginning stage of her isolation period. The eggs should come within the next week.
Image and concept © 2009, J. Ehrenhaft.
Category Artwork (Traditional) / Fantasy
Species Dragon (Other)
Size 900 x 695px
File Size 26.4 kB
They tend toward slenderness, like desert or plains wild horses. They go through periods of exclusively hunting in the winter and early spring, in high summer, they don't hunt anymore. They are warm blooded but have difficulty regulating their body temperatures in heat, so summer is a herbivorous period, where the plates migrate to forested areas or areas where grains naturally occur and the autumn is a full omnivore period where they eat whatever they can find. Autumn is when females return to their plate with the offspring.
It'd be neat to see some plate and individual shots at different times of the year.
Kinda reminds me of the 'unicorns' in a book series. Elven nobles bred really aggressive two horned creatures with their best warrior stallions. Did a bunch of stuff magically. Resulted in an omnivorous war mount that no one could control. They stay alone when hunting in autumn and winter, getting extra speed and stamina and such from the meat, then taper off to herbivore behaviour to join up on the plains for mating in the summer.
Kinda reminds me of the 'unicorns' in a book series. Elven nobles bred really aggressive two horned creatures with their best warrior stallions. Did a bunch of stuff magically. Resulted in an omnivorous war mount that no one could control. They stay alone when hunting in autumn and winter, getting extra speed and stamina and such from the meat, then taper off to herbivore behaviour to join up on the plains for mating in the summer.
I've always tried to build the dragon thing as a naturally occurring alternate evolution. Dragon evolution started at the end of the Jurassic period, right when birds started evolving in our reality. Proto-dragons were a lot more like dinosaurs than birds were. Birds got the feathers and such from their raptor counterparts/progenitors. Dragons came from a semi-aquatic progenitor. Early feathers were not good for flying and poorly adapted for water. The proto-dragon was also a carnivore and with the continually changing environmental factors, they largely moved out of the water near the equator where food was more abundant. During the last ice age before what we think of as human history, most aquatic dragons died due to migratory patterns in their food supply.
I'll be posting more of these, from time to time, so I'll fill in more of the background from there.
I'll be posting more of these, from time to time, so I'll fill in more of the background from there.
Sounds great. I'm curious, do you have any 'fire breathers'? Scientifically, it's more than a possibility for dinosaurs since most of what we go off of is theory. Heck, it's only been in the past few years that they gave more credit to dinosaurs having multiple colours or patterns on their skin.
Actually, yeah. The fire breathers are tropical. They fly, too. Think tropical birds. They're tiny by way of comparison, have hollow bones, and can mimic human sounds, hence, dragon speech. They have a symbiotic relationship with a species of bacteria, who cannibalize the copper in their system and produce heavy methane gas as a byproduct. This copper deficiency in their blood turns the primarily herbivorous species of dragons into intermittent blood cravers. They don't eat meat but will tear into other animals for the copper rich blood. Add to that an electrical organ in the mouth and you have an ignition system. Also the electrical organ explains the myth of potent dragon venom. All my dragons have the electrical discharge in the mouth that stuns prey. Multiple bites can so disrupt your nervous system that you suffer symptoms similar to massive poisoning and die days later. I was gonna draw one tonight, a tropical, that is, but the alpha male eastern plains dragon grabbed my attention first.
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