Fire-breathing dragons! What lovable, popular creatures they are to put into a fantasy world. But do you ever wonder what they eat? Besides the princesses or whatever they lure into their lair. I mean, what foods do they eat in order to fuel their fire? Perhaps they have to eat some strange mineral found in caves, or some acidic plant, or they could eat skunk cabbages and chench-rot vine like my sister's dragon does. Do your dragons have to eat something special?

My dragons produce fire chemical compounds naturally, but capsaicin causes their chemical glands to swell and can make them leak fire.

So, what happens if you feed them jalapenos?

Then you don't want to be anywhere nearby.

So you could feed a bunch of dragons jalapenos and then drop them in the enemy fortress and run?

I guess. It's worse for the gargoyles though. They already have trouble controlling their fire.

I'm afraid all my dragons have ever eaten is red meat. They sleep a lot though and don't have to eat much unless they are awake.

Plus there are the sentient dragons that can speak and eat their meat cooked.
The people in my world though can't decide if the ability to speak makes them the same as people with soul and all that or not.

My dragons eat meat. I mean, duh, right? Although that is kinda cliche, now that I think about it......

A juicy human is always a nice treat, too.

But hey, it'd be cool if they had to eat a certain type of rock to get the minerals to produce their fire... a nice limit to an otherwise pretty much invincible creature.

I've pondered for some while having a dragon somehow get accidentally teleported into the modern world and the only thing he can find to fuel his fire is batteries and lightbulbs.

What about dragons that just drink and spit lava like we do water?

Meep! That would require quite the iron constitution, which could lead to interesting developments such as dragons that are possibly as much fire as they are flesh. I love this.

Maybe lava is part of their blood.

Dragonriders of Pern had them eating certain rocks to fuel their fires.

Maybe others eat phoenixes or have them living in their mouths like crocodile birds.

Oh, that would be perfect.

I like that.

Rin, this is not fair. How do you think of these things?

It's quite simple, actually. I don't do much else.

Having a phoenix make its home in a dragon's mouth (or in a dragon statue [I might use the latter, but not likely the former]) would be fascinating. Or a swarm of fireflies that are literal fire.

In my webcomic setting younger dragons, roughly the size of horses eat pretty much any meat they can catch, adult dragons, now as big as a house tend to hunt bigger prey such as bears, elephants and other large creatures but start to act more like say pythons or anacondas and after eating a big meal say a few hundred pounds of of whatever meat they can find tend to not eat again for months and usually sleep for weeks while the oldest and biggest dragons grow about as large as a commercial airplane and they must hunt and eat things like other dragons, whales and giants and then once full tend to sleep for decades at a time only waking up between decades to eat again, build up its hoard of shiny objects or mate.

Huge creatures can be a real strain on their environment so I thought this system would be a fun kind of real life quirk to add to a fantasy element.

Sorry for talking so much, God bless!

My dragon eats soldiers and their murdered families.

Ooh. O.O Are you claiming the real fire fireflies, or am I?


I love this idea! Are the dragons difficult to find when they're sleeping after meals? How do they keep from getting hunted and killed while they're asleep? Or do they not bother the humans terribly?

(I love hearing people's ideas, so no need to apologize for talking. You have some fascinating concepts!)


Muahahaha!

In one of my NaNos, my dragons (along with other fire-related creatures) eat the berries of a type of tree (which really should have a name, but hey, it was NaNo and it took up more words to say "the spindly fire berry tree with leaves of orange" than "Flamebush" ) which give them certain nutrients and chemicals necessary for their flaming. The story actually focused on a disease which affected the tree and started killing the fire-creatures. The phoenixes in that story ate the fire berries alone, but the dragons would eat anything that tickled their tastebuds.

Apart from that, most of my dragons tend to be omnivores or carnivores. I think once upon a time I had a story where they all ate fish... But it never saw paper. XD

This is a neat idea!


My dragons are shapeshifters and eat whatever we would.
Though they don't mind raw meat, they normally cook it with their fire.

You are welcome to the fireflies, Lissy.

Yay! *Saves fireflies for writing prompt*


I love this idea. If you have forests of the Flamebush then you also have potential for infestations of dragons and other fiery things.

For dragons that are sentient, how do you deal with the notion of eating humans or other sentients?

Maybe the sentient dragons are cannibals.

I want a little cupboard dragon that eats the bugs that get into flour and pasta. :3

There may be sentient dragons who eat stupid or witless dragons, believing themselves to be the superior race worthy of such domination.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaas.

I wonder if fairytale dragons always want maidens because maidens have a higher fat content than knights.

I extremely doubt that's the case...

Not only would it be easier to take the maiden (I mean, the knight's just gonna kill him) but she also won't be wearing as much armor (if you're a dragon, do you seriously want armor stuck in your teeth?).

Now I'm thinking about writing a fairytale in which the knight goes undercover as a lady in distress so he can kill the dragon.

Dooo eeet.

DO THIS I NEED IT XD XD XD XD XD

Yes, do it.

I have dragons that are about the size of owls, only shoot out tiny sparks and also have a glowing light that attracts insects. Which I just realized basically makes them bug zappers. They also eat tiny mammals.

My dragons eat meat but the ones that live along the coast also eat fish (they just swoop down and catch something big). Fire is just part of their biology, they don't eat anything special for it. But the ones on the coast like to sleep in rocky pools along the shore, with the seawater lapping around them, to cool their bellies.

I've played with stories ideas with dragons and I have one short story where the MC is a dragon but I never really thought about what they ate. I always just assumed they would go hunt things like deer and rabbits(depending on the dragons size) whenever they got hungry. In one of my stories though, the wild dragons are the only ones who actually eat people and they are not sentient. There is a kingdom, though, where most of the inhabitants can change into dragons at will so they go and fight the wild ones whenever they show up. Of course they are always hungry after a big fight, but they turn back into their human forms before eating. The fire always comes from magic, because the world is full of it, but there are some things that, depending on the dragon, help their fire burn hotter and such.

Ahaha, I love all the ideas ya'll are tossing around!

Sort of related to food... are your dragons susceptible to poisonous substances? (Plants, toxic waste, animals, etc.)