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Post by Tiger on Sept 5, 2011 7:01:53 GMT -5
Thanks, Sarn =) I don't know, I think the fact that we can look at Chinese dragons and call it a dragon says a lot. I mean, China has some unique animals. Look at panda bears; they don't look or act much like the bears we're used to in eastern Europe or the Americas, but there's still something bearish about them. Different interpretations of animals between cultures is nothing new, either. Wolves were regarded as evil by most of eastern Europe, and then their colonists, but no other culture seems to have hunted them nearly to extinction. Ancient Mayans considered jaguars (and hey, while we're at it, amphitheres (feathery wyvern dragons (those I'm not so sure about =P)) nearly god-like figures, while Native North Americans were content to respect the similar mountain lions as powerful creatures. The Dragons "documentary" I mentioned earlier suggested Chinese dragons could be a recent branch-off of a marine species that survived whatever killed the dinosaurs; it's long, slinky build was a remnant of the marine shape. Though it couldn't fly, it could make very long, almost "gliding" leaps. As for all the differences, well, a lot of people in olden days didn't have much more than stories to go on. Here's a hyena, a pelican, and two ostriches from a the Aberdeen Bestiary, a bestiary from ~1200 England. If even the official bestiaries were going by word of mouth, it stnds to reason that individual artists were just going by what they had heard. Skimming the bestiary, I find, too, that there are a lot of really... untrue "facts" about these animals XD I wouldn't be entirely surprised to find something "mislabeled" as a dragon, though. And I agree, fire-breathing would be among the least likely of the traits to have actually been based in fact (though that, too, was given a theoretical working in the Dragons "documentary). The Bombardier beetle is a pretty good basis for a fire-breathing-like attack. Termites (and I think some ants?) can squirt acid. On another note, I completely forgot about this, but: here's an old article on a "unicorn deer" found in Italy. Perhaps sightings of a deer like this inspired unicorn mythology. And Draco - wow, that salamander is amazing XD |
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Post by Dju on Sept 5, 2011 11:33:52 GMT -5
Dju, if YOU want to believe in something, you should. Just because most people don't doesn't mean you should be like them. Be yourself. An original is always worth more than a copy. <3 (And yes, I did plagerize that quote. From a poster in my English classroom XD) I want to believe I'm a millionaire but that doesn't make it real.  In any case, I don't think Dju mentioned anything about wanting to believe in these things, but rather being discouraged from it by the fact that almost, if not all evidence for the existence of some mythological creatures has been fabricated? Correct me if I'm wrong, Dju. xD; You're correct Sarn! ^-^ I don't believe in mermaids or fairies because...I dunno, feels unlikely to my eyes...but it would be really epically awesome if they did! *-* ...But sailor's death would increase by 70%, just sayin'. XD Good bye, Sailor Moon! D: |
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Post by Yoyti on Sept 6, 2011 20:46:28 GMT -5
I believe that, to a certain extent, faeries exist. Mermaids, not so much, mostly because I can see no reason that evolution would allow such a creature to exist. (Although someone on Mythbusters did say that given a really really long time underwater, humans might eventually get rudimentary gills, but we're really just better off with SCUBA suits.
The reason I believe faeries exist is because I hold the belief that if a legend sprung up from an animal that we know well, that animal is the legend. Not what was mistaken for the legend. If someone were to say "oh, Nessie doesn't exist, it's just an elamosaur that survived extinction" I would be annoyed. Because that dinosaur is Nessie. Not some proof of Nessie's nonexistence. Anything supernatural can be given scientific terms, and then said to be completely ordinary because "science proved it." I say no to that. But perhaps that's for a different debate?
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Post by Pacmanite on Sept 7, 2011 11:12:36 GMT -5
This discussion is in danger of falling victim to the semantics...
Can naming a lizard a dragon make it a dragon? I mean it seems like a silly question but I think it's important. Because until very recently human kind has been naming creatures based on mainly superficial resemblances to other creatures and things, until the past few centuries where the idea of naming discrete species based on more innate features has become important.
Consider the penguin. It's a biggish flightless bird that lives way down near the south pole. It also happens to be black and white. Incidentally, a North Atlantic bird, the Great Auk (now extinct) was also biggish, flightless and black and white, and one of the common names for that more familiar bird was "pinguin". Thus when European explorers came into contact with big, black and white birds down south, they naturally called them penguins.
Other than the superficial resemblance, though, the two birds are unrelated and morphologically different.
Now... does naming an Antarctic bird after a North Atlantic bird make them the same bird? Only if you define "penguin" as a descriptive term for any big black and white bird that can't fly. If you do, then both birds could be called penguins. So there would be nothing wrong with calling them both penguins.
"Objection!" Say the biologists. "The birds are totally different species, so they need specific names." Indeed there are multiple Antarctic penguin species and all of these have been given unique names, for the record.
But what you see happening here is that the definition of a "penguin" acquires a new meaning. The birds themselves are the same as ever, but we have now narrowed the sense of "penguin" by applying it only to the southern hemisphere birds, while the North Atlantic bird is now officially called the "Great Auk". Furthermore, no species is simply called "penguin" only but they have names like "king penguin", "emperor penguin", "fairy penguin" and so on.
Nowadays, it's incorrect to call any bird a penguin other than the ones we've already conventionally named penguins (unless you discover a new species of bird morphologically related to known penguins, and it is allowed by the biological community for you to name it a penguin). So even though an ostrich is large, flightless and has black and white feathers, you can't call it a penguin because doing so would be considered confusing and unnecessary... and unconventional.
How does this relate to dragons and unicorns?
Well. Let's backtrack a little. What is an animal? Is it any creature that conforms to a set of features, and it's OK to apply descriptive names to whatever range of creatures that fit those features we want? Or is an animal a member of a species, which is a discrete branch of the tree of life, such that its name must reflect the naming conventions of its close family?
I don't mean to say that either of these positions is incorrect. Indeed, the common names of many lizard species do include the word "dragon" (Komodo dragon, water dragon, bearded dragon, etc.) and common names often represent traditional ideas of what the animal should be classified as (the "killer whale" is nevertheless a dolphin in the eyes of science).
But I would like to point out that a name is not the same as the thing itself. Real animals can be renamed by scientists. Names can also be subjectively applied to a broad range of animals, according to the whims of whoever is speaking.
So what would naming a little winged lizard a "dragon" achieve? Does it imply that we have suddenly discovered that the dragons mentioned in a manuscript written thousands of miles away and hundreds of years ago were real? Or does "dragon" merely mean that we, as a culture, have developed a collective idea in our head of what a dragon looks like, and can then consequently apply it as a descriptive label for an animal which looks like this mental image. Like "penguin".
Because if an "animal", as we understand, is a mental image of a creature which conforms to a certain generalised appearance, then creatures like "penguins" and "bears" are essentially just as imaginary as "dragons". And if a name is a description for any creature that looks like that image, then "dragons" are no less real than "penguins" and "bears".
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Post by Stephanie (swordlilly) on Sept 7, 2011 16:00:16 GMT -5
But I would like to point out that a name is not the same as the thing itself. Real animals can be renamed by scientists. Names can also be subjectively applied to a broad range of animals, according to the whims of whoever is speaking. So what would naming a little winged lizard a "dragon" achieve? Does it imply that we have suddenly discovered that the dragons mentioned in a manuscript written thousands of miles away and hundreds of years ago were real? Or does "dragon" merely mean that we, as a culture, have developed a collective idea in our head of what a dragon looks like, and can then consequently apply it as a descriptive label for an animal which looks like this mental image. Like "penguin". Because if an "animal", as we understand, is a mental image of a creature which conforms to a certain generalised appearance, then creatures like "penguins" and "bears" are essentially just as imaginary as "dragons". And if a name is a description for any creature that looks like that image, then "dragons" are no less real than "penguins" and "bears". Going off of that, I'd just like to add that experts and laypeople disagree on names. (Btw, this isn't my own idea; it's from another student's cognitive science honors thesis, which she talked about at a presentation that I attended. The particulars of her research aren't necessary for this discussion, but if you're interested in reading further, PM me.  ) So for example, a biologist might insist that a tomato is a fruit, whereas a member of the general public, who tends to use the tomato only for cooking, might think of it as a vegetable. Who is right? It depends on the context of usage. For almost any animal or plant, there's a technical name and a common name. The technical name is more accurate and specific, but the common name is more poetic and memorable. If you're interested in studying the biological details of an animal, then you need to be very careful about the conceptual tools that you use. But if you just think that a particular animal is beautiful and inspiring for your own artistic purposes, then you can call it a unicorn or dragon or whatever you want, and you can play with the allusions/ambiguities that are included in the name. (Actually "ambiguity" has a negative connotation; poets prefer the word "amphibology." But again we're stepping into that "jargon v.s. common words" arena. XD) |
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Post by Nimras on Sept 7, 2011 18:06:24 GMT -5
A lot of Dragons in mythology don't have wings, so insisting that a creature must be a large winged reptilian creature to be called a "dragon" seems a bit silly to me. Especially since that famous "here there be dragons" map ( the Lenox Globe) actually says that for the location of the isle of Komodo. (Which, incidentally is the only map to specifically state "Hey, there are dragons here." In other maps they're a decoration or a symbol to denote that "sinful" people live in such-and-such region). The number of maps which use "here there be dragons" to show the edge of the known bleeding into the unknown = 0. A lot of cryptids I think are known to science, but since they don't exactly match peoples expectations, they're not accepted as such by some people. Sea monsters, for example: I can also grow to be 17 metres (56 ft) long, and can have have bright red mane like a lion when I'm an adult!  I'm known to science as an oarfish! I'm a shark usually found around the waters between Japan and China! Many people believe that I'm an actual water dragon!  Science knows me as a Frilled Shark! Others, like the famous Zuiyo-maru carcass (which I'm not posting a picture of, as it's kind of gross), have been shown to be nothing more than an extremely decomposed basking shark that had people believing it was a plesiosaur. You'll still find people who argue that it really is/was a long extinct swimming reptile, never mind that it is a 99.05% match to a basking shark's proteins and that pretty much every basking shark looks like that at some point as it's decomposing. I'm all for new species being discovered. I'm a true believer in the Ivory Billed Woodpecker having survived extinction and I have argued vehemently in the past on the existence of the Colossal Squid (some may be more familiar with its former name, a Kraken) and I have high hopes for the Thylacine having survived extinction. Giant Octopus do exist (that's my home turf one, living in Oregon -- also, they eat sharks). But all of these are animals related to other, existing and known, animals. If the existence of a creature requires rewriting the known laws of physics to exist, and there is no actual hard proof of said creature, than I can not take it seriously. I feel that instead things take attention away from possibly critically endangered animals that could die out while people are off chasing fantasies and preventing a real study of what's out there. (A la the transdimensional space Bigfoot theory I actually had someone telling me about. It had something to do with lasers, infra-red technology and lay lines with space aliens. Don't ask.) |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2011 20:49:56 GMT -5
About the dragon thing: while they may not breathe fire, exactly (I don't know of a discovered species who does - still, big world and bigger universe, maybe some alien species does), I'm sure there must be some kind of winged reptile in the world. Maybe it does resemble a dragon.
And remember sea serpents? I think that eels are the proven existence of them. We may have only discovered relatively small eels, but giant eels probably do exist, there's a lot of ocean we haven't yet explored.
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Post by Crystal on Sept 8, 2011 0:04:06 GMT -5
Just for the record, I completely burst out laughing at "I'm cute!" and "I'm kind of goofy looking!". Nimras, you just made my day. xDDDD
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Post by Draco on Sept 8, 2011 3:50:30 GMT -5
A lot of Dragons in mythology don't have wings, so insisting that a creature must be a large winged reptilian creature to be called a "dragon" seems a bit silly to me. Especially since that famous "here there be dragons" map ( the Lenox Globe) actually says that for the location of the isle of Komodo. (Which, incidentally is the only map to specifically state "Hey, there are dragons here." In other maps they're a decoration or a symbol to denote that "sinful" people live in such-and-such region). The number of maps which use "here there be dragons" to show the edge of the known bleeding into the unknown = 0. A lot of cryptids I think are known to science, but since they don't exactly match peoples expectations, they're not accepted as such by some people. Sea monsters, for example: I can also grow to be 17 metres (56 ft) long, and can have have bright red mane like a lion when I'm an adult! I'm known to science as an oarfish! I'm a shark usually found around the waters between Japan and China! Many people believe that I'm an actual water dragon! Science knows me as a Frilled Shark! Others, like the famous Zuiyo-maru carcass (which I'm not posting a picture of, as it's kind of gross), have been shown to be nothing more than an extremely decomposed basking shark that had people believing it was a plesiosaur. You'll still find people who argue that it really is/was a long extinct swimming reptile, never mind that it is a 99.05% match to a basking shark's proteins and that pretty much every basking shark looks like that at some point as it's decomposing. I'm all for new species being discovered. I'm a true believer in the Ivory Billed Woodpecker having survived extinction and I have argued vehemently in the past on the existence of the Colossal Squid (some may be more familiar with its former name, a Kraken) and I have high hopes for the Thylacine having survived extinction. Giant Octopus do exist (that's my home turf one, living in Oregon -- also, they eat sharks). But all of these are animals related to other, existing and known, animals. If the existence of a creature requires rewriting the known laws of physics to exist, and there is no actual hard proof of said creature, than I can not take it seriously. I feel that instead things take attention away from possibly critically endangered animals that could die out while people are off chasing fantasies and preventing a real study of what's out there. (A la the transdimensional space Bigfoot theory I actually had someone telling me about. It had something to do with lasers, infra-red technology and lay lines with space aliens. Don't ask.) I think if I saw "I'm Goofy Looking" I would think it was some kind of dragon like creature  A goofy one, but still XD |
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Post by Pacmanite on Sept 8, 2011 8:17:07 GMT -5
Regarding big eels = sea serpents;
This rare footage of a living 15-foot oarfish might be of interest.
My warning: it's a bit of a sad end for this oarfish when you think about it. "She's beautiful!" "...She's dying."
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Post by Nimras on Sept 8, 2011 12:43:18 GMT -5
About the dragon thing: while they may not breathe fire, exactly (I don't know of a discovered species who does - still, big world and bigger universe, maybe some alien species does), I'm sure there must be some kind of winged reptile in the world. Maybe it does resemble a dragon. And remember sea serpents? I think that eels are the proven existence of them. We may have only discovered relatively small eels, but giant eels probably do exist, there's a lot of ocean we haven't yet explored. There has been only one kind of flying reptile: Pterosaurs. They lived 200 million years ago to 65 million years ago, and went extinct the same time as dinosaurs. Early pterosaurs simply had a gliding ability, due to large scales that they could inflate out their sides -- similar to "flying squirrels" today.  By the end of the dinosaur age, there were pterosaurs the size of giraffes. Many species had gotten so big that they had lost the ability for true flight. It's very likely that their fossilized skeletons helped fuel "dragon" stories.  Sadly, there are no living relatives/decedents of pterosaurs today. Birds are descended from dinosaurs, not pterosaurs. (Fun fact! Hoatzin birds are born with clawed fingers. They're the last of the clawed flying dinosaurs.) There are no six limbed (four legs + wings) vertebrate species -- not even in the fossil record -- which makes the classical description of a dragon somewhat difficult to justify zoologically speaking. Yes, you'll get the occasional mutant who has extra limbs, but that is not something that is inherited -- it's a twin that didn't separate completely, or a limb bud that went wonky. It's not inheritable, and such animals don't usually survive to adulthood to pass on their genes. Just for the record, I completely burst out laughing at "I'm cute!" and "I'm kind of goofy looking!". Nimras, you just made my day. xDDDD  I'm glad you liked it! I tried to go for happy pictures. I think if I saw "I'm Goofy Looking" I would think it was some kind of dragon like creature A goofy one, but still XD Though here is a video of one swimming, they're actually quite graceful. |
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Post by Tiger on Sept 9, 2011 10:18:36 GMT -5
The reason I believe faeries exist is because I hold the belief that if a legend sprung up from an animal that we know well, that animal is the legend. Not what was mistaken for the legend. If someone were to say "oh, Nessie doesn't exist, it's just an elamosaur that survived extinction" I would be annoyed. Because that dinosaur is Nessie. Not some proof of Nessie's nonexistence. Anything supernatural can be given scientific terms, and then said to be completely ordinary because "science proved it." I say no to that. But perhaps that's for a different debate? I'm not really sure how that relates to faeries, or what you're trying to say about Nessie. If Nessie is an elasmosaur that survived extinction, then that's what it is. How does investigating and figuring out what the Loch Ness monster might be invalidate the "monster" itself? Nessie is fairly unique among cryptids, I think, because she's pretty isolated and a relatively recent legend. Things like dragons and kappa and mermaids have been expanded upon beyond what their possible original sources might be; to call that giant salamander a kappa, for instance, would be really awkward because it's missing so much of the mythology that goes with a kappa. But maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you're trying to say? A lot of Dragons in mythology don't have wings, so insisting that a creature must be a large winged reptilian creature to be called a "dragon" seems a bit silly to me. Especially since that famous "here there be dragons" map ( the Lenox Globe) actually says that for the location of the isle of Komodo. (Which, incidentally is the only map to specifically state "Hey, there are dragons here." In other maps they're a decoration or a symbol to denote that "sinful" people live in such-and-such region). The number of maps which use "here there be dragons" to show the edge of the known bleeding into the unknown = 0. Really? I didn't know that, how interesting! And looking at Komodo dragons, I can see how such a creature would inspire those stories. Except for the lack of wings, it is pretty close to a dragon, both Eastern and Western (though I still hold out that evolution can pull off many wonderful tricks, and if flying reptiles happened with the Pterosaurs, it's possible it could happen again) Your point about focusing on cryptids vs endangered animals is a good one. It's fun to wonder about them, but if I had a choice between financing a dig for dragon fossils or a breeding program to help save my namesake kitties, I'd definitely pick the latter. |
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Post by Cupcakes are Good on Sept 9, 2011 23:22:35 GMT -5
I'm one of those people who think there is a possibility that dragons could have existed at some point, due to the fact that different types of dinosaurs existed and I'm positive that we don't know about half of them. Also, I'm sure that to be a dragon you don't have to breathe fire and terrorize villages...if they ever existed, there would have to be some harmless species that just flew around and was like 'Hey, look at me, I'm a cute lil dragon and I'm not going to eat you, lessthanthree!'
However, in my opinion, there is a slim chance that Nessie exists, no matter how much I wish she did (a sea monster with a cute nickname would be totally awesome XD). On the other hand, I agree that it may be exaggerated. What if Nessie was just the size of a trout? As for the whole 'you need to have a stable population to survive' issue, maybe the little trout-sized Nessie has little trout-sized Loch Ness Monster friends? Or maybe I'm just too willing to believe she exists, but man...that would be epic if she (and maybe her herd of little trout-sized Loch Ness Monsters) did.
About fairies and mermaids...as much as I'd love to say I believe, I don't. I just don't see how half-human, half-fish/insect things could exist. Maybe on some other planet in the universe, but Earth? I don't think so. But who knows? There's so much to explore on Earth, you never know what there may be.
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Post by Dju on Sept 9, 2011 23:26:07 GMT -5
Well, the Loch Ness lake is really, really, really deep... XD Maybe Nessie could resist high pressure?
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Post by Cupcakes are Good on Sept 10, 2011 0:15:40 GMT -5
By the way, I found this video some time ago, so here it is if anybody finds it interesting.
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) So for example, a biologist might insist that a tomato is a fruit, whereas a member of the general public, who tends to use the tomato only for cooking, might think of it as a vegetable. Who is right? It depends on the context of usage.
A goofy one, but still XD
