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“I don’t think there’s a way to keep ethanol. However, van Breukelen says, it’s not quite so simple. He and his colleagues published their fishy findings in 2015 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.Ī dragon might be able to produce ethanol under similar circumstances. The fish produce 7.3 times more ethanol than fish living in cooler water, notes van Bruekelen. In the process, their bodies make ethanol. Instead, they produce energy anaerobically - without oxygen. When it gets hot, the oxygen levels drop even lower - too low for the fish to breathe. There is very little oxygen in the water to start with. Temperatures in Devil’s Hole reach 33 ☌ (91 ☏). This fish can whip up its own whisky in a pinch, van Breukelen and his colleagues have shown. It is a tiny, incredibly rare species found in Devil’s Hole - a single naturally heated pool in Nevada.

The Devil’s Hole pupfish doesn’t bother with them. A dragon that got enough fiber in its diet to make methane could pass that gas on to its bacterial buddies, which would convert it into methanol.īut those bacterial coworkers might not even be needed. Certain bacteria can turn methane into methanol, Hartings notes.

Ruminants - including cows, goats, giraffes and deer - make methane during digestion. Yeast are part of the microbial community that lives on and in people and other animals. A dragon with a bellyful of yeast is not as silly as it might appear. That’s why they’re used to brew beer and make other alcoholic beverages. These single-celled fungi transform sugars into alcohol. “Certainly, we know that yeast makes ethanol,” Hartings says. Living things already produce two of these that might work for a dragon: ethanol and methanol. The aerosol would spread out, she says, “and the minute it hits air - kaboom!” Something fiery, something fishy “In a fine aerosol spray, it would look like the dragon is spraying fire,” Burks notes. If a dragon were to shoot an aerosol spray, it could look like a gas, with some of the properties of a liquid. In an aerosol spray, tiny liquid droplets are suspended in a pressurized gas, which spurts out when it is released. “As long as you are shooting it out fast enough, particles don’t hit the air until they are far enough away from your face,” he notes.Ī combination of liquid and gas might work even better, Burks suggests. The liquid with its flammable gas would ignite as soon as it hit air. “You have a much better chance of controlling your flame spray if you’re pushing liquid rather than a gas,” he explains.Ī liquid also would help a dragon avoid burning itself, Hartings notes. If a dragon blew some fiery gas into the wind, the flames might wash back on the creature and singe its face. “You’d have to really compress it,” he says, to make it a liquid that a dragon could store and use.Īlso, Hartings notes, gases are difficult to control. At room (or dragon breath) temperature, it’s a gas. The boiling point for phosphine is -84° Celsius (-120° Fahrenheit). To keep it contained, a dragon would have to keep that gas under pressure.Ĭhemicals like phosphine, therefore, aren’t the perfect dragon-fire solution, Hartings says. Gas, he notes, expands to fill available space. But a gas would present problems, Hartings says. Burning burpsįictional dragons often spout flaming gas. It’s also very toxic: Just seven drops of its liquid form can kill someone. In gas form, phosphine is very flammable and explodes on contact with oxygen.

McCaffrey describes her dragons chewing on rocks containing phosphine - a chemical made of one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms.

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Iron sulfide is sometimes the culprit when gas pipelines or tanks blow up.Īnother explosive option comes from Anne McCaffrey’s series The Dragonriders of Pern. Combine it with air and you’ve got an explosive mix. When hydrogen sulfide and iron get together - in a rusty oil pipe, for example - the result is iron sulfide. This is a flammable gas that smells like rotten eggs. Iron can react with another chemical, hydrogen sulfide. “If you’re living amongst a bunch of rocks, you’ll have access to a high amount of iron.” Assume that dragons like caves, he begins. He’s a chemist at American University in Washington, D.C. There are other pyrophoric chemicals that a dragon might find a little closer to home, notes Matthew Hartings. “There are a lot of cool elements on the periodic table, but only use a few,” Burks explains. Unfortunately, iridium isn’t common, especially in biology. (That’s one way to get the blue flame of the zombie ice dragon in George R.R. Iridium burns different colors when it becomes part of various molecules. Consider the element iridium, says Raychelle Burks. Pyrophoric molecules burst into flame the instant they contact air. Steenblik Hwangīut some chemicals don’t need that initial spark.

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