Dragon stories are told in many places. The oldest Chinese dragons are more than 3,000 years old. In old Chinese stories, dragons brought rain to help crops grow. They lived in water or in the clouds. Chinese dragons were pictured as a mix of parts from many animals. Storytellers gave them a snake's neck, a carp's scales and an eagle's claws. In China, the dragon is a lucky symbol that stands for wisdom, power and good fortune.

The dragon is one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. So there is a Year of the Dragon. Each New Year, people in China hold dragon dances. A dragon dance is done by a team of people. They move a long dragon puppet together. Dragons were not always scary. In some stories they bring rain and good luck, and in Chinese stories they guarded waterways, mountains or skies.

The English word dragon comes from the Greek word drakon, which meant a serpent. The old English poem Beowulf has a dragon that guards a pile of treasure. Dragons in old European books were drawn in many different shapes. Medieval animal books called bestiaries included imaginary animals, such as the phoenix and the unicorn. These books grew from an older Greek book called the Physiologus, and later writers added more to it.

Long ago, people found giant fossil bones and made up stories to explain them. Ancient Greeks and Romans collected fossil bones. People who did not know about extinction thought huge fossils might belong to dragons. Sailors long ago told of mermaids. But they were most likely seeing manatees. Sea serpent stories are very old. The giant oarfish may be one real animal behind them. As of November 2026, the giant oarfish is the longest bony fish in the world.

The narwhal's long spiral horn is really a tooth. A narwhal's tusk is not solid bone. It is full of nerves and can sense changes in the water, such as salt and temperature. Long ago, traders sold narwhal tusks as unicorn horns and got a lot of money for them. Queen Elizabeth I was said to own a unicorn horn worth 10,000 pounds, the price of a castle. Kings and queens drank from cups made of unicorn horn because they believed it was protective.

Komodo dragons are real animals. They are the largest lizards alive in the world today, and wild ones live on a few islands in Indonesia. Scientists from the West did not find Komodo dragons until the early 1900s, after rumors of a giant dragon-like lizard. Komodo dragons eat almost any meat, from small rodents to large water buffalo. Komodo dragon mouths are not especially dirty. So the old idea that germs kill their prey does not hold up well. The Smithsonian's National Zoo was the first zoo outside Indonesia to hatch Komodo dragons, in 1992.

Words to know

• zodiac: 12 animal signs
• serpent: snake
• bestiaries: animal books
• narwhal: tusked whale
• fossil: old bones