What are dragons? Answer is not as obvious as it seems

Dragons are very popular creatures in culture, both in movies, books, comics and games. However, their performances are very different, not only now but also throughout history.

Most dragons recently, e.g. in the Hobbit movie and The Elder Scrolls games are depicted as dinosaur-like lizards, with two legs and two wings formed from the transformation of the front paws, as in bats. However, in medieval legends such a form was clearly separated from dragons, and its representatives were called wyverns.

Decades ago, dragons represented as four-legged, two-winged lizards, sometimes moving on four and sometimes on two legs. Such have occurred, for example, in the films The Last Dragon and Eragon, games from the Warcraft series and many cartoons. Such an image, however, will begin to clarify in the late Middle Ages.

Dragons from the Pokemon series are an unusual case because they have various shapes and I suspect that even the creators do not know what dragons are in their world 😊

Here we come to the interesting issue of Asian dragons, which have long, snake-like bodies, four small paws and features of various animals, e.g. deer horns. Probably the most famous Asian dragon currently is Shenlong from the Dragon Ball comic.

I used to wonder why Asian and European dragons styled the same way, since they look so different. The answer to this is quite obvious, if we realize what the dragons were originally in European legends and myths, namely they were great snakes.

Already in ancient Greece, in one of the myths the dragon that Apollo fought with was a big snake and his name was Python. It was from his name that the name of the entire species of snake came from, while in the Nordic myths the great snakes of the world, one of which was Nidhögg, were also often called dragons. In the apocalypse of Saint John the dragon, which Archangel Michael is to fight at the end of the world, is called the ancient serpent, which can be a reference to a serpent identified with the devil, who led Eve to sin.

So the answer to the question of what dragons are is that they were originally huge, monstrous snakes, but over time they evolved in people's minds so dynamically that now they probably have the most forms and shapes of all mythological creatures.

Snakes were amazingly important in most ancient beliefs around the world, e.g. in Central America the feathered serpent was very important, in Australia the rainbow serpent, and in the Slavic regions Żmij. In my opinion, this is due to the natural fear of snakes, which can be very dangerous, and this fear eventually turned into respect. Other animals are also instinctively afraid of snakes, because one time when I was walking with my she-cat, we met a harmless snake (grass snake) and immediately she got scared of him, although other similar animals, e.g. lizards are not scary for her. Probably cats are afraid of cucumbers, because they remind them of snakes 😊

Nowadays, snakes  often have bad opinion and are not liked because some of them can be dangerous, which is why people are afraid. However, I have always liked serpents and led across the street so that nothing bad would happen to them. Here, where I live, there is only one species of a venomous snake, which are zigzag vipers, and observing them, I discovered that when you push them with a stick to get off the street, you need to really upset them, that they try to bite, and even when statistics show that vipers rarely use venom because it is very valuable to them. In addition, the frightened viper makes a loud hissing warning and runs away. That's why you just need to be careful not to have any problems with the snakes, because they only attack to defend themselves.


I came up with and drew my own dragon. I tried to make him look like a snake, but also that there was no doubt that he was a dragon. He is called the dragon of the northern horizon, and above his arms there are clouds of smoke from which he can form wings when he wants to fly.

Dodatkowo pokażę wam zdjęcie małego zaskrońca którego złapałem, żeby przenieść go przez drogę, bo czasem przejeżdżają je samochody. Słyszałem czasem stwierdzenia, że węże są oślizgłe w dotyku ale to nie prawda, tak naprawdę ich łuski przypominają metal, są suche, gładkie ale niezbyt śliskie 😊

Eng. In addition, I will show you a photo of a small grass snake I caught to move him over the road, because sometimes cars pass by. Sometimes I heard statements that snakes are slimy to the touch but this is not true, in fact their scales resemble metal, they are dry, smooth but not slippery 😊