How much does a dragon weigh?
[image error]I’ve been thinking about writing a fantasy story in which the main character picks up a sickly young dragon and carries it home. Would that be possible? How much does a dragon weigh?
Google’s answers refer mostly to Dungeons & Dragons, where the dragons weigh tons, and that’s not my fantasy universe. I want a fantasyland closer to our consensus reality (the “real world” to Muggles). Dragons fly, and birds fly, so perhaps we could extrapolate dragon weight from bird weight.
Canada geese have a sort of dragon-like shape — and like dragons, they can be nasty. If geese could spit fire at us, I’m sure they would. Very roughly (for easy math) a Canada goose is 3 feet long from beak to tail, has a 5 foot wingspan, and weighs 10 pounds. A dragon 30 feet long with a 50 foot wingspan would weigh 100 pounds.
That’s not very much. It would be far easier to carry around a dog-sized dragon than to carry around an actual dog. The hard part would be avoiding the dragon’s fiery breath.
Even a dragon the length of a city block, about 300 feet, with a wingspan equal to the height of a 50-story building would weigh only 1000 pounds. A dairy cow weighs more. World champion weightlifters could pick up a skyscraper-sized dragon.
So … dragons are lightweights. That’s useful to know.
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How about a really really skinny dragon?You're right. I made a major math error. Still, a skyscraper-sized dragon weighing only as much as an elephant would also be relatively lightweight.
As for the boron and phosphine, you're also right. I can just wave my hands and mutter "magic."
Thanks!
Well, Smaug was more or less a winged skink, so a skinny dragon makes sense. In consensus reality, at least of the past, there wa the Quetzalcoatlus pterosaur. It wasn't 300 feet long,a nd I don't know how heavy it was, but it could fly.In other news, I've got to admire your bravery in using WordPerfect. I just wrote a story in it, and lost half the story after doing a spell check! It just disappeared. For the time being, I'll stay with Word.
However, if it's a baby dragon it could be goose-sized and carriable. I don't know how big Komodo dragon hatchlings are, but I assume about the comparative size of a Canada goose hatchling compared to the adult bird.
McCaffrey's dragons were about 300 feet long and presumably had a corresponding wingspan. They relied heavily on boron in their diet to produce muscle and tendon that could stand the stresses involved. They ate 'phosphine'-bearing rock to make fire, but you needn't worry about that. Dragons make fire. It's magic.