Why? Why do you?
Clever boy!
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As when in the Song of Solomon the bridegroom says to the bride,
“Your hair is like a flock of goats”
I hope he doesn’t mean it smells like a flock of goats. Especially since the bucks urinate on themselves to attract the ladies.
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What, me joke around?
I think this is a great point, Christy, and one that others in this conversation could do with reflecting on. I’ve worked alongside many folks for whom English is not their first language, and this element of conversation English has been something that they’ve particularly struggled with. Life-long English speakers miss it because it is part of our cultural atmosphere. However, English is a highly idiomatic language, many of which are not always clear to the outside interupteror at first glance… and you can quote me on that! 
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Here is a blog entry that discusses the importance of cultural context, even in our own not-too-distant culture:
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That’s too funny! I was literally thinking about that conversation earlier today! 
Apparently I wasn’t the only one. 
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I thought it was about someone working on dinosaurs and not Hiob or ’î·yō·wḇ 
Where have you been?
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Well now!
Living life and thinking like crazy!
I still lurk here, though, and I miss participating as much as I used to. Maybe a day will come when I will have productive things to say again.
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Okay, no pressure.
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I am rather disappointed in seeing someone post an image such as this apparently in support of the idea that there is no difficulty in reconciling the argument against biological creatures breathing fire without suffering burns.
Some very obvious problems should be noted with the image above…and it doesn’t take much intelligence to discredit it:
- Note the distance between the actual flame and the man’s mouth
- Note that he is, for want of a better term, spitting out the liquid at quite high velocity from his mouth. Then using known flame-rates of flammable liquids used in this activity, what might the velocity of that “spitting” be and why is it necessary? (the answer should be rather obvious here even if the actual rate isn’t known…the reason for the high-velocity spit should be quite obvious!)
- he is holding a bottle of said liquid in his left hand
- whilst it is hard to see in this image, most often these flames are ignited using an external source of ignition such as a lighter or torch! (note what he has in his right hand)
may i add some references and an image of of my own that illustrates the inherent dangers in biological creatures using fire in unsafe ways! Where safety is usually that which is aimed at protecting one from harm by advising abstinence from engaging in stupid behaviour!
The image below shows exactly why i have trouble reconciling the idea that biological creatures can literally breath fire out of their mouths.
_______________________________________________________-
Now i know that we fart methane gas…and of course i cant say whether or not an animal would be capable of farting/burping such a gas out of its mouth (noting the gas would have to travel out of its digestive system)…perhaps dragons had some special pipe from their bowel back up through the neck to the throat in order to allow for this?
Yeahhhhhh. Blowing vertically with mistimed ignition is an evolutionary dead end. At either end. And no way did dragons have to evolve a gas pipe. That’s just silly. They must have been ruminants with multiple stomachs. OR!!! They never breathed fire!!! They otherwise eructated it. But like a tail as firm as cedar don’t mean a tail, fire breathing don’t mean breathing! Comes uh eatin’ beans as we know, includin’ human, due to the fermentation of the oligosaccharide verbacose in the large bowel.
I generally agree with this Klax with the exception of the tail waving like a cedar tree. I don’t see any issue with this, its very plainly obvious that the writer is describing a very large tail. (that is self evident) However, for the purposes of the discussion, i wonder what sorts of biological “parts” and animal capable of fulfilling the medieval fire breathing creatures might look like? What sort of stuff on the inside would such a creature need in order to be capable of being called a flying, fire-breathing, dragon? (anyway this might be offtopic…perhaps better on a new thread?)
(please note, i am not making any relationship between this and scripture illustrations of the devil being called a dragon)
Adam, all that is needed is the human imagination.
Biblical monsters don’t need a reference among real zoology of any time. Human cultures have been going wild, imagining creatures which never existed at least since there has been art. Here are some sources:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mythical_creature
Not sure if you’ll be able to open this one. Try checking it out for a few days, and see if that works:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
The motherlode:
There’s more, but some sites require digging around without any good search tools.
And then there are these, which are only a matter of difference of scale — like the Kracken:
(Google image search: dragon-like lizards)
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The visually most impressive trees in the neighbourhood were cedars. What else are you going to compare your ‘tail’ with. ‘Tails’ that curve or go straight up. Erect ‘tails’ of great girth, bursting, oozing and dribbling with sap. The kinda thing you need to go chasing tail with for sure… I don’t recall seeing make-ups of dinos with vertical tails.
I don’t know why we need another thread as the mythical Job didn’t walk with priapic lizards so they might as well have been fire breathing sauropods he who wasn’t didn’t walk with.
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And still are, case in point, the Monster Manual from Dungeons and Dragons has some very interesting additions, especially in the aberrations and abominations categories. Like the Beholder, for example, which features on the front cover.
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Liam, I found a tour of the book:
(Reminds me a bit of the artwork of the Brothers Hildebrandt, back in the early '80s.)
I’ll also throw in Hieronymus Bosch (b. ? - died: 1516)
Image linked to search page:
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