I'm currently working on a family picture of Beau and his family, but I'm not sure how many dragons are born in the same clutch of eggs. I'm hoping other people's opinions will help me decide.

Searching though real-life species didn't help much. Bearded dragons lay around 20 egs, Komodo dragons around 25, some dinosaurs around 8, and horses, which are used in the same way as dragons, have one baby at a time.

All the dragon-like lizards I had the change to look at were smaller than dragons and less intelligent, likely giving less parental care, which would both indicate larger clutch sizes, but the intelligent cretures around today aren't lizards and therefore are likely to have fewer young at a time.

So how many eggs do you think are laid at a time, and why?

I'd say 1 egg, perhaps 2 on occasion.

Creatures at the top of the food chain tend to have fewer young unless infant mortality is high for one reason or another (like reptiles with little or no parenting skills that just abandon their eggs). Nothing much can threaten a dragon (except nasty humans like Word, and there aren't many like him around), and dragons are clearly intelligent enough to make excellent parents. It's also possible that they've been living symbiotically with humans for so long that they've evolved to let the humans do the parenting. Since the humans clearly want dragons around to ride and help with all the heavy lifting, the human caretakers wouldn't let anything happen to the young. So infant mortality should be very low and therefore they wouldn't have to produce a large number of eggs.

Also, raising a baby dragon, like a human child, could involve years of attention. So the parents would be overwhelmed if a large number eggs were produced at once.

I'm agtree with Furox

Aah, I put 2, but I really think Beau was an only child. I mean, if he had a bro or sis that wasn't the dragon of legend, they'd be going through life with an inferiority complex. Hey, that might make a good fic!

You should do that, Kereea!! :D

Well, if dragons EXISTED I would know...

But in most animals it usually 5-6.

I might have a thought about that even if it is a little weird...
What if the dragon and humans both parent a hatchling? Something like the dragon parents and maybe their rider being a human godfather/mother so to speak?
Slightly weird concept but it might explain a few things if their races really are that close.

So humans took parent's role?

At least partially is my guess. Beau's attitude toward Conner might suggest it in some ways from the first episode. or at least I think so.

Doesn't seem weird to me. We are talking about a world where dragons exist and where said dragons can generate and direct large amounts of energy by will alone. :D After that, other things tend to look rather mundane.

Though it looks like a dragon's rider probably wouldn't be involved in rearing the baby dragons because they'd be too young themselves. It appears that both Artha and Lance are the same age as their dragons, so they couldn't have done much until they were old enough. A lot of the riders appear to be the same age as their dragons.

I would tend to guess that dragon breeders like Connor do a lot, if not most, of the work of raising a hatchling. What all that involves besides obvious things like feeding, I don't know. Dragons are intelligent enough that they could get into a lot of mischief, so containment might be issue #1. Plus it could be a bit dangerous to be around them if they decide to practice their mag-burst on you. :blink:

HEHEHEHEHE


I just canm imagine that :D::D

Well kinda ment Rider in a general sense, But yeah. With Beau, Artha and Lance, I'd Guess that they were raised together. With Artha's attitude towards Beau in the first episode it looked like he thought of Beau as something like a annoying brother. Something that he's more of less gotten used to. Not sure about Lance and Fracshun.

I decided to revive this post with the question:

How long does it take for the eggs to hatch?

I agree. ! egg.

I think it's more in the three to six range. After all, Oryon had five eggs.

I'd guess in about 7-8 months, since that's how long Komodo Dragons hatch and that's the closest thing to compare them to.