#as opposed to the 104 assumed with the more canon two cattle a week | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kariachi · 2 years

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Achi’s Pern Thought of the Day: A gold dragon in the 9th Pass is, from the information we get in the DLG, like 5 stories tall, and given that probably like 30 tons with our best size comparison being fucking sauropods because there is only so much you can drop the weight on a 131 foot long quadruped, and yeah the other ranks are smaller but there’s far more of them, even the bronzes outnumber golds by multiples, and the other ranks are all far more active especially during a Pass, but supposedly these carnivores are functioning off a small number of wherries or cattle a week- for comparison an african wild dog in a zoo is typically fed ~31% of their body weight a week, and a crocodile typically ~10% of it’s body weight a week, while a gold dragon is supposedly going off ~6% a week, and the ratio is probably worse for greens and blues depending on the size of wherries-

And I’m just screaming in Scifi Writers Don’t Understand Scale. Love this series, but screaming

#you could get the percentage up to 'maintain cold-blooded sedentary species at a healthy weight' by adding another cow or two to gold diets #and up to 'maintain active warmblooded species at a healthy weight' by adding another eight or nine #by assuming dragons are somewhere between the extremes you could probably call it at 5-6 cows a week for the golds #meaning each gold would be eating between 260 and 312 cattle a year #as opposed to the 104 assumed with the more canon two cattle a week #benden was odd for only having three golds because ramoth was territorial #so as per the canon info they took in about 312 cattle a year just to feed them #and with the adjusted numbers anywhere from 780 to 936 a year #and that's being nice because if we go with the 'active warmblooded species' numbers that jumps to 1560 a year to feed benden's golds

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