Extracts from Varani, Dragons: A Primer for the Interested Laypony
Acknowledgements
First of all, I should like to thank Erisian Publishing and its founder, Viceroy Discord, for giving this disgraced Canterlot University dropout a decent platform outside the stultifying, mirthless tedium of modern academia.
My husband, Zakras, has supported me even at my most incorrigible, garrulous, obnoxious, and emotional. And my two hatchlings, Ticktock and Mimsy, are transcendental expressions of the reproductive urge. My gratitude is unbounded.
Last, but certainly not least, thanks to Spike, former associate of the bearers of the Elements. As the only dragon who has ever been a citizen of Equestria at a time when knowledge of dragons was on the far side of nought, no less, it was Spike who inspired this book. Come home soon, Spike. Celestia will be waiting.
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Gemstones and the dragon diet
Gemstones are one of those things, like light and water, that are so ubiquitous and fundamental to biology and technology that many of us fail to give them their proper due. Shallow aesthetics aside, gems function primarily as resonators with the thaumic field[1][2]. Though many living beings are magical in some way, it is only through biologically accreted gems that creatures such as unicorns, alicorns, changelings, draconequi, and giant portias can exercise such precise control over magic[3]. Moreover, the thaumic field provides seemingly limitless energy at the cost of degrading the crystalline structure of the gem channeling it.
Dragons are the only extant order of vertebrates that have adapted to utilise gems as a source of metabolic energy (of the invertebrates that use gems for metabolic purposes, all species of ecdychordates use gems as an intermediary to parasitise emotional energy via the thaumic field, and some nautiloids are known to scavenge gems when other food sources are unavailable[4]).
This has had a unique effect on their evolution. Gems do not rot. This makes hoarding food an excellent survival strategy. After a certain level of hoarding is reached, of course, a dragon's access to food is assured. Excessive hoarding behavior beyond that point is considered by most reputable academics (and myself, for that matter) to be the result of sexual selection[5][6].
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Dragon development and lifespan
The fossil record is sparse enough to reduce any study in dragon evolution to mere speculation. I can do no better here than recite in a more interesting manner the commonly accepted tales woven by Princess-Professor Twilight Sparkle[6].
It is thought that the early gem-eating ancestors of dragons were r-selectors. They produced prodigious numbers of offspring, the majority of which died before they ever had the chance to reach adulthood. The harsh and variable conditions in which the offspring found themselves encouraged adaptability of a remarkable degree. The survivability conferred by this strategy eventually led to all know species of dragon to abandon r-selection and only produce small numbers of young.
Young dragons are intelligent and flexible, perhaps more so than any other animal. If alone, they become solitary scavengers. If together, they learn to work in packs. They are quite capable of adapting to the social lives of other species. The three most startling cases involve young dragons adopted by ursa majors[7], ponies, and even changelings[8].
The transition into adulthood is governed by various hormones, the production of which which can be stimulated by the acquisition of a sufficiently large hoard. A young dragon that obtains a hoard and a reliable means of adding to it can grow astonishingly quickly. But, even without this cue, the slow release of these hormones means all dragons grow up eventually, usually over a span of between two and five decades[6][8].
The transition to adulthood brings with it an entirely new layer of matter on the dragon brain: The avacortex. The development of the avacortex is far less flexible than the development of the young dragon's reptilian brain. It consists primarily of advanced pattern matching, and incentives and strategies for hoarding, copulation, and the like. [9] The academic community thought for some time that the behaviors instilled by the avacortex drowned out any behaviors learnt as a whelp, making the adult dragon intelligent but largely machinelike and nonsentient. Comparisons were drawn to tunicates, close relatives of vertebrates which in adulthood become sessile and absorb their own brain. To my great shame, I was a proponent of this theory for some time. Now we know that, though the mechanical behaviors in the avacortex often hold sway, the behaviors learnt as a whelp can exert a strong influence even on adult dragons[8].
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[1] Eyeglasses, Thaumic Energy and its Interaction with Crystallographic Stuctures
[2] Marks, Gems: The Great Industrial Backbone
[3] Sparkle, Resonant Protein Crystals in Vertebrates, Arthropods and Polyphyletic Hybrids, Journal of Molecular Biology 16ANM, Issue 429
[4] Leafdew, A Trans-Equestrian Bestiary
[5] Cirrus, Summary of Draconoidae Evolutionary Hypotheses, Journal of Natural Selection and Thaumological Based Evolution 21ANM, Issue 42
[6] Sparkle, Speculations on the Evolutionary Development of Reptiles of the Order Draconoidae, Journal of Natural Selection and Thaumological based Evolution 18ANM, Issue 30
[7] Dryquill, Behaviors of Dragonwhelp Found in Everfree Forest
[8] Princess Mi Amore Cadenza's Journal as an Ambassador to the Changelings
[9] Hammer, Neurobiology of Dragon Specimens found in the Grand Swamp
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