Are Dragons animals ?

[Grifthin]

Well ? Are they ? Often portrayed as intellegent creatures, do they really count as animals or are they sentient so to speak ? Any ideas ? Oppinions ?

[Valerion]

You are asking this of a bunch of furs and scalies? Prepare for some VERY subjective comments

In most mythological frameworks (Far Eastern and European), dragons are seen as intelligent or highly intelligent (in China, they were servants of the Celestial Court, and in Japan one of the major Shinto deities is a dragon). I am not sure about American Indians, I believe they saw it as a force of destruction.

That said, for many of us animals are sentient as well (or at least most mammals). Depends on what you consider to be sentient. Legally speaking in South Africa, they are not, treated the same as any object. The only protection offered is the animal abuse legislation.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience it is defined as:

Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive subjectively.

Merriam-Webster agrees on most points. Strictly by that definition, all mammals I have interacted with (especially canines and felines) are sentient.

What you are likely referring to is Sapience (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapience). Again, from the sentience article:

The word sentient is often confused with the word sapient, which can connote knowledge, consciousness, or apperception. The root of the confusion is that the word conscious has a number of different usages in the English language. The two words can be distinguished by looking at their Latin roots: sentire, "to feel"; and sapere, "to know".

and from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapience

Sapience is often defined as wisdom, or the ability of an organism or entity to act with appropriate judgment. Judgment is a mental faculty which is a component of intelligence or alternatively may be considered an additional faculty, apart from intelligence, with its own properties. Robert Sternberg [1] has segregated the capacity for judgement from the general qualifiers for intelligence, which is closer to cognizant aptitude than to wisdom. Displaying sound judgement in a complex, dynamic environment is a hallmark of wisdom.

The word sapience is derived from the Latin word sapientia, meaning wisdom.[2] Related to this word is the Latin verb sapere, which means "to taste, to be wise, to know"; the present participle of sapere forms part of Homo sapiens, the Latin binomial nomenclature created by Carolus Linnaeus to describe the human species. Linnaeus had originally given humans the species name of diurnus, meaning man of the day. But he later decided that the dominating feature of humans was wisdom, hence application of the name sapiens. His chosen biological name was intended to emphasize man's uniqueness and separation from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Are animals sapient? Certain primates and cetaceans display most aspects of it. I have known dogs that I have considered to be very intelligent, but that was measured against the others of the same species. Dolphins for example have been able to follow instructions given to them, and communicate concepts. The problem is that sapience is a very ill-understood, ill-defined and human-centric definition.

To give you the subjective part of the post, I think some animals are intelligent, by my own definitions. And dragons as well

[Grifthin]

Wow - very comprehensive answer. The reason I asked is that in many cultures the Dragon has already got many human traits, and I was wondering if it was really needed to "anthro" it so to speak.

[Valerion]

I "overanswer" sometimes And I think Dracius is the best to answer this in any event.

No, they don't need an anthropomorphic form to be intelligent - most of them are anyway. However, dragons are usually MUCH larger than humans, so an anthro (or even a smaller feral) dragon may be much easier to interact with than a classic one.

By the same token, feral furries are often portrayed as much more intelligent than their real-life counterparts. They are intelligent, but not anthropomorphic. Though they are in the minority, I think. I may be very much mistaken, though.

[Grifthin]

There's no such thing as over-answer.
Thanks all

[Keita Haruka]

Well, given that we as humans have only three categories to classify living things into...those being humans, animals and plants (and here I'm not speaking scientifically because scientific classification is a minefield depending on which system you choose to recognise)...dragons could be lumped in with animals simply because they're not plants and not humans. There's just no category for "other intelligent life". Unless you want to count aliens (and even then, that just means "not from earth", so intelligence is not even a consideration).

It is true that our concept of intelligence (or sapience, as Val states) is very homocentric. but than...that's true of most people anyway. We all judge other people's intelligence by whether or not we 1) understand what they say, 2) they understand what we say 3) they agree with what we say. :p Because if they don't, they're obviously demented, neh?

That means that we can only recognise something as intelligent if we can interact with them on an equal level. Obviously if you knew that your dog could uncover the secrets of quantum mechanics and could argue philosophical points with you, you wouldn't treat it like a dog, would you? You'd treat it like you would another person.

I think that's the thing. Dragons are often depicted as creatures that we could understand and interact with on that level. Sapient? No doubt about it. Animal? For lack of a better classification system...yes.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

0.o What kinda weird answers are you people giving? Humans = animals. Smarter than all other animals yes but still animals. Dragons would be animals if they existed. Simple. None of this other nonsense you people are spouting out.

[Valerion]

Strictly biolologically speaking you are correct, humans are animals. However, I am sure there's lots of humans that will disagree with you (especially religious fundamentalists). I am a science guy, so I agree with the humans=animals view.

However, to be animals (Kingdom Animalia) an animal must pass some rigorous tests that I am not sure mythological or magical beings can. For example, one recent paper stated that Life (above the Domain level) should be divided into creatures with a very specific DNA pattern (double-helix consisting of the 20 left-turning amino acids). The name of the division escapes me at the moment. Not widely accepted, but it for one excludes viruses.

[Dracius]

I'll have to agree with Raki. We are definitely animals, but have the awesome ability of common sense. By human definition, dragons should be animals too, but they also seem to inherit a degree of common sense.

Also, understand that our knowledge is based on what is said and heard. No one can actually confirm anything techical about a dragon, besides reading back to stories, legends, etc. (afaik)

And Raki, its not nonsense, its views of peoples opinions and ideas. Remember, its our basic understanding that says that a dragon is an animal. A dragon could look the same as our definition of it, but turn out to be something completely different on the inside. Just a hunch.. expand your mind, like a dragon would

[Keita Haruka]

0.o What kinda weird answers are you people giving? Humans = animals. Smarter than all other animals yes but still animals. Dragons would be animals if they existed. Simple. None of this other nonsense you people are spouting out.

:p Note that I specifically stated that I was NOT speaking scientifically but in general terms as the "man in the street" Joe Average would probably see it. If I was speaking scientifically, Dragons would either be in the kingdom Animalia or the kingdom Eucaryota (depending on which system makes the most sense to you) along with humans. No argument there. Scientific reasoning has absolutely no bearing on this however as dragons don't exist and therefore they are whatever we percieve them to be in the same way we think of our anthro (or sometimes feral) fursonas.

I agree with Dracius though. Do expand your mind a little.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

I'm just saying with the exception of let's say skeleton, undead dragons, all the dragons I've heard of are alive like all other animals.

And we could say the Komodo Dragon is a real life dragon. And it's animal.

And I really don't care for fundamentalist religious views. They usually have nothing of substance to back them up and are just saying "this is what happens and you can't show it doesn't." Where as the rest of the world says "This is what happens and why we say that it does."

And not trying to start another argument but some people, me included, say viruses are alive.

[SilverDragon]

If I can be the one to give the most simple answer.. yes, I believe dragons are animals

[Keita Haruka]

I'm just saying with the exception of let's say skeleton, undead dragons, all the dragons I've heard of are alive like all other animals.

And we could say the Komodo Dragon is a real life dragon. And it's animal.

And I really don't care for fundamentalist religious views. They usually have nothing of substance to back them up and are just saying "this is what happens and you can't show it doesn't." Where as the rest of the world says "This is what happens and why we say that it does."

And not trying to start another argument but some people, me included, say viruses are alive.

Well, technically, the Kommodo dragon is a lizard.

*raises eyebrows* Who said anything about religion? It is simply a "rule of thumb" classification system that doesn't really have anything to do with religion. It is simply a system we use because quite frankly, there IS no other species that's even remotely like us.

No...I'm NOT saying humans are better than any other species, and for all intents and purposes, there are other species that are closely related to us and others that have comparable intelligence, but they are not "like us" in a way that would allow us to interact as equals. They are different from us, not better or worse, and the "rule of thumb" classification system is based on difference, and so it seems natural.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

*raises eyebrows* Who said anything about religion? It is simply a "rule of thumb" classification system that doesn't really have anything to do with religion. It is simply a system we use because quite frankly, there IS no other species that's even remotely like us.

No...I'm NOT saying humans are better than any other species, and for all intents and purposes, there are other species that are closely related to us and others that have comparable intelligence, but they are not "like us" in a way that would allow us to interact as equals. They are different from us, not better or worse, and the "rule of thumb" classification system is based on difference, and so it seems natural.

However, I am sure there's lots of humans that will disagree with you (especially religious fundamentalists).

Dunno where you getting this "no species remotely like us" nonsense from. I can only see two real differences between us and other animals, mainly because almost anything can be simplified and broken down.

Difference 1: We pass on information from generation to generation. This is both through language and writing. Also you could very capably argue that writing and language are the only things that make us smarter than other animals. Why do I say that? Primitive tribes lived almost exactly like monkeys. Language and writing allowed fast transfer of information between groups, meaning they didn't need to learn things over again. No other animal can do this as well. Early humans and recently 'civilised' groups have rich oral tradition. i.e. Xhosa and Zulu. They were more advanced than other animals living were they were but nowhere near as advanced as Europeans. Why? Europeans had writing. You can go to the library and learn about anything the entire human race has recorded without needing to find a tutor who can teach you. Without writing to build a computer each generation would have to independently discover electricity, transistors, plastics and every other advance used in it's construction. You an use a computer without any knowledge of how it was made and the people that build them now don't need to go back to basics, they can start off where someone else finished.

Difference 2: Humans kill over ideas. Religious wars and such happen because of those sort of things. No animals kill because they have a different view of how the world came to be.

Those are the only differences. Biologically a human is a weak example of an animal but there's absolutely nothing to set them apart.

[Dracius]

Those are the only differences. Biologically a human is a weak example of an animal but there's absolutely nothing to set them apart.

I completely disagree with your statement. I'm not even going to highlight about mental capacity. Physical capacity? The human body can be extremely strong. I obviously need to show you a few videos where this dude kicks a crash test dummy, filled with sensors, in the chest area. The impact of the kick was around 2x - 3x stronger than a 60km/h vehicle hitting your chest. (Its something to that affect, at least. I'll definitely show you though).

Its just, not exactly everybody does this, so its up to each individual person to create or break this.

Oh, and dont forget that we have hardcore regenerative measures built into place. Though medical has accelerated this a shit load...

[Rakuen Growlithe]

Yeah I said we have better mental capacities, probably stimulated mostly by language and writing developments. The thing is we also don't know other animals mental capacities, just whether they're used or not.

I know there are a bunch of exceptional people but I'm talking generally. If you really worked at it you could build yourself up to the level of that guy but the average person is nowhere near that strong. But if you take the average elephant it's a lot stronger.

We can regenerate pretty well but compare our regeneration to lizards and starfish. lizards can regrow whole limbs and some starfish can be cut into lots of pieces and as long as there is apiece of the centre each leg you cut off can grow into a totally new starfish.

We didn't develop physical abilities because humans use mental abilities, language and writing. If you take those away we pretty much suck.

And stories of people that survive major things are cool. I heard the human body can withstand pressures that would destroy some machines, i.e. where people fall out of aeroplanes and survive. (but don't try it)

[WolfyDragon]

Weird topic, well I dont know about animal, or myth, or science. but something about Dragons has drivin the concept for thousands of years. then if you throw the concept of magic into it it gets even more complicated. But yeh not too sure with science, its often disproven by beings who think further than what they see.

[WolfyDragon]

Weird topic, well I dont know about animal, or myth, or science. but something about Dragons has drivin the concept for thousands of years. then if you throw the concept of magic into it it gets even more complicated. But yeh not too sure with science, its often disproven by beings who think further than what they see.

If I could, I'd travel back in time just to slap the stupid out of my former self for that comment.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

And I was quite confrontational back then but perhaps we shouldn't revive an 8 year dead thread.