Two Legged Dragons in 99% of Movies. What's Up With That?

Wings are arms that are specialized for flight. Birds for example, have two back legs for standing, and two front arms that they use to fly. Same for bats. When you see a dragon with two wings plus four legs, it technically has six legs. Two back, four front. I prefer dragons with only two back legs and two wings, otherwise I start thinking about how weird it would be for a vertebrate to have 6 legs and how that really would not work in real life (unless perhaps the wings were far enough back from the front arms that the shoulder blades and muscles for both would not get tangled).

In my mind, dragons have 4 limbs & wings, and wyverns have 2 limbs & wings.

They don’t get tangled; just like griffins don’t tangle their wings and forelegs.

I know why most dragons in movies are two-legged – it’s a matter of anatomy as well as biology. The dragons in movies are theoretically living on Earth and on Earth, there are only four-limbed animals (not counting bugs here) – no six-limbed, which would be required for four-legged dragons (which are technically six-limbed beasties, as wings are limbs just as much as legs are.) So, that is why 99% of the dragons in movies are two-legged rather than four. The film makers make them two-legged to make them more believable as Earth organisms… though I believe technically, if you look at mythology a two-legged dragon actually isn’t a dragon at all but a wyvern.

For an example of a non-Earth dragon, Anne McAffrey (RIP!) has proper four-legged dragons, but she explains the fact that they have six-limbs (counting wings) by having other six-limbed animals… namely, the tunnel snakes, which are also six-limbed. There’s a whole Genus of six-limbed animals on Pern – on Earth, there isn’t. (Unless you want a bug dragon of course, but that wouldn’t work because yuck.) In my own series, there’s actually a lot of six-limbed animals as well as dragons, which helps there and any four-limbed animals in those evolutionary groups are explained away properly with residual limbs. (Think of whales – their ancestors were four-legged – another example is horses – they may only have one toe today, but several million years ago, they had more and remnants of those toes may still be found hidden in the leg bones of a modern horse’s skeleton.)

I haven’t really noticed that many movies with evil destroying dragons personally. Smaug’s evilness doesn’t really mean that all of his brethren are evil and the dragons in LOTR (fell beasts or something I think?) aren’t dragons at all, though yeah, they’re evil – but they’re not dragons.

I unabashedly write, draw, design and collect dragons because I love dragons, period. 🙂

So yes… the reason why we can’t have proper four-legged dragons in our movies is because Earth’s biology and evolutionary tree doesn’t support the notion – and because film makers are obsessed with believability which comes from, at least in the case of creatures, the sciences of anatomy and biology – watch the special features regarding Buckbeak the hippogriff in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban if you don’t believe me! Science is VERY important to film makers!

Director Peter Jackson (LOTR, Hobbit) has the film rights to the Temeraire series by Naomi Novak and it’s been stated that he’s thinking of making that into a mini series (ohheckyes!) so hopefully then we’ll finally have some awesome four-legged dragons… ‘cus the dragons in the Temeraire series (most importantly including Temeraire himself) are four-legged dragons. Also, the Pern books are also supposed to be getting a movie, according to the author website (now ran by Todd McAffrey.) I’m hoping dearly for both! 😀

It has never even occurred to me there were two legged dragons and 4 legged dragons with wings. When I think of a creature with wings like a pegasus for example, I do not think of a two legged horse with wings. That would be creepy and weird. So I think of the same thing with dragons and griffins, to have 4 legs and two wings. I only think of birds as having two legs but I think of mammal or reptile type animals as having 4 legs. If you add wings on even if they count as limbs, I still don’t see it that way. I see them as something that can be added or taken away, not there to replace legs.

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/draco-lizard/

I like dragons with four legs and NO wings… do those have a special name?

lizard?

Heeheehee j/k

I think there are a variety of different names for a wingless dragon, and I’m not sure if there is one common one. I’ve heard drake for them, but i’ve also heard drake for a male dragon, and for as another name for a wyvern, so i’m not sure