An often overlooked but much asked question, is just what do dragons drink?
And we think it’s a very good question too! We know a lot about what dragons eat from reading books, watching TV series and hearing famous tales and dragon legends. But little is spoken about their drinking habits. In fact, in most books, shows and movies, it’s extremely rare to see a dragon drinking at all!
Do dragons drink water?
This is a real bone of contention. On the one hand, most people agree that dragons must absolutely need water to survive. Every living creature needs water to survive after all. Even the dragon’s blood tree! And there’s nothing in the anatomy of a dragon to suggest these creatures would be any different to you or I.
But then there are those who seem to think that because dragons (western dragons in any case) tend to be fire breathers, there would be no way that they could drink water. Wouldn’t it put the fire out?
Well while debate rages about how dragons actually go about breathing fire, none of those methods would actually mean that drinking water would prevent it. Unless you sprayed water into their mouth while they were spitting flames! And good luck to you if you do that!
So, yes, in Dragon University’s opinion, dragons do drink water.
Do dragons drink milk?
One of our favourite stories to answer this question concerns one Daenerys, who you’ll of course know from Game of Thrones. In A Song of Fire and Ice, Daenerys raises several young dragons. These young dragons are orphaned from their mother and need to be fed.
Too young to eat solid food, the dragons require milk. So what does Daenerys do? She breastfeeds them of course.
While that might not be the first solution that you’d come up with in that scenario, what does seem clear is that baby dragons are the same as any baby animals. So what do dragons drink? When they’re babies, it seems that they drink milk.
This also helps with the debate on the issue of whether dragons are reptiles. You see, reptiles don’t produce milk, so why would a dragon ever need to drink it? The simple answer seems to be, dragons aren’t reptiles!
Do dragons drink anything else?
Ferocious killers who eat their prey will naturally drink the blood of their enemies. But we don’t think that dragons actually go out of their way to drink blood.
In cartoons, both animated and drawn, dragons are often shown to drink beer! And in the cartoon that tops this article, you can see the dragon enjoying a lovely pot of English tea.
The truth is that the world of dragons drinking is one that hasn’t been well explored in mythology and dragon legends, so you can probably make up your own answer!
So, what do dragons drink?
Like any living creature, dragons mostly drink water. However, baby dragons are known to drink milk. Dragons will also ingest blood when eating their enemies and prey, but it’s not something they do to survive.
Do you know of other liquids that dragons might drink? Do you disagree with anything we’ve said here? If so, head on over to Facebook to let us know!
