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Just wondering if you guys know if Dragons are considered reptiles and cold blooded?

We were just running a campaign where 3 of the 5 party members went invis or shadow meld. Just wondering if the Dragon which could be cold blooded? May remain undetected if the dragon was cold blooded if the opponents were using heat sensors.

Warm blooded.

Dragon Blood is not only poisonous but steaming (sometimes scalding) hot.

I don't have RUE (yet).

I was quoting readings from other texts including Palladium Books Presents Gods and Dragons (which includes conversion notes for Rifts™)....

Definitely warm blooded.

Nope, they're warm-blooded mammals.

Warm blooded and when wounded the blood is scalding hot for the few moments ( may be longer, I dont have the books in front of me ATM).

well if they have any possisile relation to dinosaurs (which has been hinted at a few times) then they are not mammals, but warm blooded archosaurs

I don't think a dragons a mammal, warm blooded ya but not a mammal.

They are specifically stated to be mammals in the books. Apparently, they're monotremes, like the platypus and echidna.

I'm not so sure a dragon would be a considered a mammal?

Isn't one of the main characteristics of being a mammal having body hair? Unless your speaking about the Wooly Dragon... I don't see much body hair on a dragon.

Also another main criteria is that the females have mammary glands(produce milk). So where are the dragon breasts? So does drinking dragon milk give you supernatural strength?

Dragons lay eggs & most mammals don't lay eggs.

(The platypus and echidna which are the only two mammals that lay eggs.) I personally think those two species are incorrectly classified. (Enchidna's don't have teeth, which is needed to be classified as a mammal.)

I think the milk producing is the only mammal criteria and you don't need breast for this as milk oozing between skin joints (or in this case between scales) counts. I think the criteria for mammal couldn't be reached because dragons don't raise their young, instead imparting knowledge psychically and abandoning before birth.

The onlt other fixed criteria are a cerain type of joint for the jaw and a midle ear bone

Yep...but all and all...a dragon is a supernatural creature like many other weird and stranger monsters in Palladium Fantasy and really don't qualify for any of the normal animal classifications.

I don't think science has even considered breathing fire, teleportation, or the number of other worldly abilities and powers for animal classifications.

They are stated to be mammals though, so if we're going by the books, then they're mammals, weird as it may be.

regardless of logic, The book clearly states they are mamals.

Therefore, Mammals are something different in Rifts


Maybe humans are called reptiles...

Dragons would in my opinion vary according to species in their body temperature. A fire dragon would have very hot blood, while an ice dragon's blood definitely be cold.(In a story in the Rifter, it mentions a temperature close to that of liquid nitrogen.) I'd make a great horned dragon just plain old ectothermic,but suffer no ill effects from cold. And as far as I'm concerned, they lay eggs and are similar to reptiles.

First, dragon are creatures of magic, second a dragon is according to the books a mammal and third, cold blooded depends on the species like an Ice Dragon.

"Cold-blooded" is kind of a misnomer. If the the OP meant cold-blooded as "does the dragon need to rely on external sources for it's internal body temperature", then I dragons are warm blooded. If the OP meant "is a dragon's blood physically cold", then I would say the answer varies (Ice dragon is cold, fire dragon is hot, etc.).

Warm and cold blooded don't really refer to the temperate of the blood, but to the body's ability to regulate it's own temperature. Mammals regulate their own temperature, reptiles do not. Dragon = mammal...dragon = warm-blooded.

Also, it's don't let the scales fool you into thinking it can't be a mammal.
Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin

This concludes our biology lesson for the day.

Also, they're Creatures of Magic...who cares how their bodies function?

And lots of things lay eggs and maintain a consistent body temperature - birds. As to platypus and echidnas being misclassfied, they aren't. They're mammals for a variety of reasons that separate them from reptiles, like fur and milk production for instance.

no it is having mamary glands aka breasts. which you listed, but that is the only requirment. hiar, teeth and live birth do not automatically exclude something from being a mammal

heck lets agree to disagree. dragons are birds, therefore archosaurs like crocodiles and dinosaurs. most scientst to day consider birds to be archosaurs. Why do i say this. they are warmblooded (so are birds), they lay eggs (so do birds), they have scales (so do birds), and even though dragons dont have feathers, they are not a requirment to be a bird.

We are all huge nerds.



~Semi

They are not mammals they do not feed their young milk.

They are warm blooded reptiles.

or birds

None of the above...sort of.

They don't nurse their young (nor do they have mammaries in the first place), so they're not mammals.

They are not creatures specifically adapted for flight, nor do they have feathers, ultra-light endoskeletons nor even wings of sufficient size to keep aloft their massive bodies (in fact, canon states them as being at home even in a vacuum, which suggests magically propelled flight even thought they still do need functioning wings to do so), so they're not birds.

And nothing besides their general shape and scales even suggests that they're repitles; certainly they're not cold-blooded as we understand the term in the real world, nor are their brains hardwired or primitive (reptiles don't have things like pleasure centers or even the so-called Rat Brain).

In short, Dragons are cool creatures that serve only the purposes of Kevin introducing his version of the most "beloved/famous" monster in all of fantasy gaming....and like most things in Gaming in general and Palladium Books in particular, they fall short under real-world scientific scrutiny.

If you value your life and/or sanity you'll never ever refer to a Dragon as reptile, mammal, bird or whatever.
Usually "master", "oh great shiny glory" or "Most exquisite fiery death from above." will keep you alive.

NOW you're talking.

Dragons fail the 'mammal' test at an even more fundamental level, since they're not even tetrapods. Three limb girdles does not a mammal make; of course, this also completely excludes them from being amphibians, reptiles, dinosaurs, and avians as well.

Now, canon (as of Palladium Fantasy at least) says they're mammals, which I assume to be a case of simplification on the part of the writers. It's easier to label them 'mammals' than 'warm-blooded, mammal-like supernatural creatures that resemble reptiles' or somesuch. Warm-bloodedness isn't a unique trait to mammals, anyway: the birds are warm blooded, as were (possibly) the dinosaurs, and some modern-day reptiles are part-time warm blooded (weird as that is).