It’s almost impossible to pin down traits that every fictional dragon shares with others-just look at the diversity of form that exists in the How to Train Your Dragon movies alone.īut do any of these dragons have real-life counterparts in the animal kingdom? Dragons may not exist exactly as we know them from shows like Game of Thrones, but have any non-fictional creatures ever demonstrated distinctly draconic features? From the compound-eyed, alien dragons of Anne McCaffery's Pern series to the chronically ill swamp dragons of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, dragons have been invented and reinvented countless times in popular fiction. No mythological creature is more varied than the dragon.
