A baby dragon, or a bad joke?

Electronic Telegraph ^ | 24/01/2004 | Roger Highfield, Science Editor

[aculeus]

A pickled "dragon" that looks as if it might once have flown around Hogwarts has been found in a garage in Oxfordshire.

Yesterday the baby dragon, in a sealed 30in jar, was in the office of Allistair Mitchell, who runs a marketing company in Oxford. He was asked to investigate by his friend, David Hart, from Sutton Courtenay, who discovered it.

A metal tin found with the dragon contained paperwork in old-fashioned German of the 1890s. Mr Mitchell speculates that German scientists may have attempted to use the dragon to hoax their English counterparts in the 1890s, when rivalry between the countries was intense.

"At the time, scientists were the equivalent of today's pop stars. It would have been a great propaganda coup for the Germans if it had come off.

"I've shown the photos to someone from Oxford University and he thought it was amazing. Obviously he could not say if it was real and wanted to do a biopsy."

The documents suggest that the Natural History Museum turned the dragon away, possibly because they suspected it was a trick, and sent it to be destroyed. But it appears a porter intercepted the jar and took it home. The papers suggest the porter may have been Frederick Hart - David Hart's grandfather.

Mr Mitchell said: "The dragon is flawless, from the tiny teeth to the umbilical cord. It could be made from indiarubber, because Germany was the world's leading manufacturer of it at the time, or it could be made of wax. It has to be fake. No one has ever proved scientifically that dragons exist. But everyone who sees it immediately asks, 'Is it real?' "

Yesterday the Natural History Museum said that it was interested in following up the find.

The scientific journal Nature once carried a tongue-in-cheek article on the ecology of dragons written by Lord May, who became the science adviser to the Prime Minister and is now the president of the Royal Society.

From the reported sightings, Lord May concluded that dragons are "both omnivorous and voracious", with great variations in diet: one made do with two sheep every day while another, kept by Pope St Sylvester, consumed 6,000 people daily. Their lifespan seems to range between 1,000 and 10,000 years.

Some scientists believe that dragons, though the product of imagination, were inspired by the extraordinary creatures that once roamed the Earth. As J K Rowling's alter ego Hermione Granger once suggested, legends have a basis in fact.

[Shooter 2.5]

You beat me to it.

The world famous pictures of:
Nessie was a model approximately three feet tall.
Sasquatch was the guy's neighbor in a costume.

Don't forget the sleigh of hand artist who pulled cancerous growths out of people. The guy from "Taxi" learned the hard way about that one.

[Aracelis]

Awww...he's cute!

[SunkenCiv]

Good point. When I read just the text of the story (in a Delphi forum) I thought it could be some fetal version of something ordinary, or with wings attached to same. Appears fake fake fake. Particularly the eyes.

[sweetliberty]

"I hate it when stories like this have no photo's"

Nope; it's Bush's fault.

[SunkenCiv]

Pickled dragon mystery (other source)

[sweetliberty]

Well, it looks very cool, no matter what it is.

[sweetliberty]

"A Baby Dragon = an English version of a Jackalope."

LOL!

.

[moonhawk]

The snake was on TV...looked real to me.

[Sockdologer]

*dies laughing* I should never freep while eating or drinking :P

[Sockdologer]

If it's real, will we clone it? If it's fake, is there an artist's signature?

[RightOnline]

No no no................you don't know how to play this game. Some twerp claims to have been Sasquatch (interesting with all the sightings all over the northwest and Canada for decades........or longer) and you believe it. Someone says they fake a Nessie photo and you discount eyewitness accounts and other evidence accumulated for many, many years from hundreds of people. You believe it.

Some rubes claim to have made crop circles with boards and rope.........and you can look at the mounds of photographs of incredibly sophisticated "crop circles" from around the world and believe these two rubes did them.

No, dude, YOU are the gullible one.

[sonofatpatcher2]

Re: The dragon is flawless, from the tiny teeth to the umbilical cord.

Must be one of Her Ankleship's ancestors... Or one of Bill's.

[Ichneumon]

Some rubes claim to have made crop circles with boards and rope.........

They did.

and you can look at the mounds of photographs of incredibly sophisticated "crop circles" from around the world and believe these two rubes did them.

Straw man fallacy (no pun intended). They may have started the craze, but then other pranksters "from around the world" played copycat when they saw how much of a fuss the circles generated.

It's interesting to note that the temporal and geographic pattern of the spread of the "circles" follows the pattern of the publicity given to them. For example, when local coverage in region X of country Y gives prominent attention to crop circles, then voila, there follow a number of local "sightings". And so on.

No, dude, YOU are the gullible one.

If you say so, Mr. It-Must-Be-Aliens.

[RightOnline]

Show me where I said it was "aliens". Show me your evidence that crop circle proliferation followed "publicity" (pretty interesting, since they've been around for many, many years......and have been concentrated in certain geographic areas, totally absent in others around the world). Also, show me how to make these designs with boards and ropes without breaking a single plant, all plants laying down perfectly aligned, highly complex images only visible from the air, leaving trace radiation, etc., etc. Let's not go into how these would be done all over the world by incredibly talented hoaxsters without ever being seen. Golly gee. We need to round 'em up and put them in Special Forces with those skills.

Try again, sparky.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Google "world's largest snake" and you will find that the snakes true length was about 22.5 feet. When scientists actually put a measuring tape to it, the zookeeper said that he had no idea how the snake shrank so much.

[aruanan]

Good point. When I read just the text of the story (in a Delphi forum) I thought it could be some fetal version of something ordinary, or with wings attached to same. Appears fake fake fake. Particularly the eyes.

Yes, but how "fake fake fake" does a platypus appear?

[moonhawk]

Darn!

Nothing cool is ever true, is it?

Thanks for the reply, though.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Seems not. Even the story about the guy who killed himself by strapping a JATO rocket to his Chevy Impala and lighting it off, only to smash into a cliff face at 350 mph 100 feet off the ground, has proven to be false.

Still a darned good story.

[Eaker]

Those are interesting links!

{above}

Thanks,

[RightWingAtheist]

Are you scientist yourself? It sounds like your job is a great big Far Side cartoon.