Equus Ferus Draconica

Basic Information

Anatomy

The Wild Dragon horse of Forice has the overall structure of a horse with four hoofed legs, strong neck, head and long mane. Where it starts differing is in the tail which adds on the dragon tail's thickness & musculature turning it from a tail of hair to a tail that's more prehensile. These horses also have a set of small horns, bigger eyes more adjusted for night vision, set of muscular wings big & powerful enough to lift them up and the fire-breathing systems of a dragon's body.

Genetics and Reproduction

The first species of this kind were artificially mixed in a lab in order to discover which subspecies are compatible enough to be allowed to mate in order to produce the exact result wanted. After that was done, a pair was matched and aided with some magic in the process of copulating. The result was a nest of 6 babies born in 10 months > since the 11 months of the horse and the 13 of the specific dragon specie used were also affected as time by the help of the magic.

After the success of the first couple some braver matches were made and out of 50 pairs a steady 30 gave birth to 95 healthy baby dragon horses, which were then released in a controlled environment for their first 20 years of life before reaching fully developed reproductivity of their own. They were then allowed to try and find a match on their own and this way, through a couple of generations, the population of Wild Dragon horses grew up and enriched itself with subspecies that could breathe ice and lightning as well as ones with multiple horns, bigger horns and two sets of wings or poison spikes on the tails.

Additional Information

Average Intelligence

Even when a few months old, the babies would understand and come when called by name, be able to recognize and get attached to a specific person and comprehend and follow simple commands like "stay", "follow" and "head" - which is when they'd bump lightly foreheads with the forehead of the trainer.
Later they'd show the ability to learn to run courses with different obstacles, including bigger bodies of water - they'd conquer them by either swimming or flying over; they'd respond to military training and keeping calm in loud and stressful situations and they'd even learn how to fend off enemies (and dragons) much larger and more aggressive than themselves.
Last but not least - one of the original six dragon foals developed a very uncanny and fascinating talent which none after were able to learn: now 75 year old Axxie managed to scare the pants off her trainer when she mimicked his voice perfectly one night before closing time. She said "hat" - because he, for some reason, was showing off his new red hat to her. Currently her vocabulary has over 70 words which she knows how to combine in sentences. Most of the time those sentences were a copy off someone but on three occasions so far she'd been caught saying things that nobody on the team has talked about. One of those sentences was "Doll in the corner - big eyes, bad eyes, hurt dead".

Scientific Name

Equus Ferus Draconica

Lifespan

The oldest dragon horse is 115 years old and still alive so nobody knows

Diet

Dragon horses combine the feeding habits of both their parents meaning while they can and happily will graze on grass all day, they'd also occasionally flambé small rodents, small mammals - up to the size of wildcats and hyenas, some birds and even a species or two of the smallest dragons. An interesting note is that they'd never eat a creature while it still moves and will never eat it fully raw. 

You can also tempt them with apples, carrots and any kind of jerky. They love drinking alcoholic beverages too - which was discovered when once in the testing spaces an assistant knocked their beer off a desk accidentally and a few of the 5-6 year old dragon foals swarmed the puddle that formed until it was licked clean. They then proceeded to prance around the enclosures for almost nine hours before falling asleep in the weirdest of positions.

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Habitat

Once released in the wild - so that they can truly be called "wild" dragon horses, they spread around the grasslands between the capital of Dargon, the biggest mage city and in the base of one of the forest elves' bigger villages. Some of them flew off and were later reported to have a good number herded in the base of a volcano in the far south of the Forice continent. 

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