This is so cool! I also just wanted to point out that I’m pretty sure it was confirmed by Tui that rain wings natural scale color is green, and that they change colors to look pretty, but not only for breeding purposes. It would make sense for them to have green scales, with being able to blend into the canopy, but they eventually became vegetarians. They probably had to have made this switch relatively recently though, as they do have sharp teeth and were meant to be the apex predator with no natural enemies
Its confirmed that they recently become vegetarians, actually! In the new guidebook there's a RainWing letter from roughly around Darkstalker's time; Page 83 'And yes, I know about your appalling obsession with taming prey, and I would like to know what we are supposed to eat if you insist on turning all our food into pets!'
OH MY GOD! Me and my best friend used to play this game where we would be the ancestors of a tribe. I remember mudwings a sky wings and seawings were like the base, when sea and mud mixed it would evolve into rainwings. It was a fun game to play and I miss the days of my childhood playing pretend.
I saw genetics and immediately felt bad, cause i went down this rabbit hole before and; Silkwings and hivewings are a nightmare to figure out the genetics for. This is much simpler then figuring out the recessive and dominant genes + letters for 'em.
Ok, so as a genetics nerd~~~ I also figured out (Hypothetical) color and pattern genetics for the dragon tribes, based in my knowlege of snake genetics. Pretty interesting seeing other's thoughts on how the tribes evolved. I feel like SeaWings didn't eveolve from the ancestor tribe, since I think in book 15 when we get a memory from Cottonmouth it shows a SeaWing, and they have WAY too many special abilities and adaptations to be from the same line. Maybe they did evolve from the ancestors, but they probably split off a good amount of time before the Scorching to live an aquatic lifestyle. Because theres no way they would evolve as many adaptations that fast. I imagine the dragons already had vast variations depending on thier home regions, as I imagine they wouldn't move around very often if they could help it. So for example, the ancestor tribe could've had family lines in the Rain forest that more closely resemble today's RainWings than other ancestors. Also other family lines better equipped for the desert, etc. Beacuse I imagine if they could help it they didn't move around and mated with whoever was next door when breeding season came. Thus you would get higher concentrations of traits in the region they they're best suited to. This could explain how the tribes differentiated so fast. They already had basically tribes and different species, all they had to do was unite during the Scorching.
About to watch the video. I wanted to mention, I like the way she makes certain species appear related. Like skywings and rainwings and such. Makes you feel smart for noticing and makes the world feel interconnected, like everything came from somewhere.
This was amazing ! It's great and so helpful ! I love the content you make and can't wait to see more! Remember to never give up ! One day this channel will grow amazingly big ! Keep going! Can't wait for part two !
Figuring out the original dragon would be very hard but They Most likely weren't multicolored, they'd be more natural colors like browns, greens, and black and white. Multicolored dragons would come from mutations(since that's all Evolution is.)
I LOVE thinking about the evolution of the dragon tribes!! Mostly cause I love evolution! While it's implied that pre scorching dragons share traits that would later become distinct for each tribe, that does not give enough time for diversification AT ALL, so personally I just say that hybrids were far more common pre scorching. I studied the traits of each tribe and came up with an evolutionary tree! All dragons have a common ancestor, my personal theory being that this ancestor is an archesaur that survived the k-pg extinction, so their closest relatives would be Crocodiles, Dinosaurs, and Pterosaurs (closest living relatives would be crocodiles and living dinosaurs, which are birds). I believe that they began without wings and wings are actually the very first animus trait, seeing as 6 limbs are next to impossible to evolve from a world with only 4 limbed animals. Same with all 8 limbed dragons, either an addition to the original animus trait or all tribes started with 8 and lost 2 over time. Regardless, this would lead to Beetlewings being the fist branch off of the tree. All 8 limbed dragons are the most distantly related to the 6 limbed dragons. And we know how Silkwings and Hivewings split. Next we have Pyrrhianforms, including all 6 limbed dragon species. Studying the anatomy of the tribes, I concluded that the next branching would be Seaforms, which would include Seawings and Mudwings. Both are plantigrade, which means their hind legs have all toes touching the ground. They both have a similar stature. Mudwings are known for being able to hold their breath for up to an hour. Their horns curl in a similar way. Their tails are fairly thick, used for combat and underwater locomotion. Their belly scales are aligned in similar ways. With Seawings, I believe that their gills are yet another animus trait. No vertebrate has ever been able to re-evolve the ability to breathe underwater, much less gills. They likely already had an extended lung capacity similar to mudwings, and they likely already had their bioluminescence for underwater communication. Mudwings have their own traits that evolved after the split from their common ancestor. Their nostrils migrated farther up on their snout to allow for crocodillian like wading, an instance of convergant evolution. Their jaws became much stronger, leading to likely the strongest bite of all the dragons, and their scales became much more rugged for protection likely from their prey, as they tend to take on fairly dangerous prey. All other tribes are within the Moutainforms, and within the Moutainforms the Desertforms split off. This split includes the common ancestor of very ironically, Icewings and Sandwings. I believe that they are more closely related to each other than they are to all other tribes. Their similarities start with their scale structure. Both are known for being spiky, and especially on their necks you and really see how similar their scale pattern is. Their scales are really similar. Both have fairly straight horns, although sandwings have a slight curve. Both are known to have dark or black eyes. Both have weapons on their tails, both are digitagrade (which I believe is ancestral to all Mountainforms), and both have a structure running down their backs. The Sandwing sail is likely a highly modified structure from something that would look similar to the spikes of an icewing in their common ancestor. Icewings have elongated, clustered spikes running down their back and ending in a spiked tail. The Sandwing stinger likely began as a modified version of these spikes that was eventually animus enchanted to act like a scorpian tail. Icewings also have their own animus feature, blue blood. Whether the original enchantment was made by an animus dragonet who didn't realize what they were doing or as a way to blend into the ice when injured in unclear, but it definitely isn't natural. All vertebrates have red blood. Icewings also likely secondarily lost their nose horn, which is likely ancestral to mountainforms. Next would be the Skyforms, this would include Skywings and what I dub Jungleforms. We all know the similarities between Skywings and Rainwings, especially since you covered it in this video. I'll skip over comparing them, as well as say I agree that Rainwing venom is very likely an animus trait. I also believe that Flamescales would be an animus trait, which would both explain why animus dragonets were killed as well as the result from animus dragons. Likely Skywings see flamescales as an animus curse (or at least they did before the information was lost). But overall, your analysis of Rainwings and Skywings is similar to how I see them. Now Jungleforms, which would include Rainwings and Leafwings. That's right, Leafwings are Pyhrrianform. There are MANY similarities in Rainwings and Leafwings. For starters, we know Rainwings are base green, which all Leafwings are. Their horns curve in a very similar way, their body shapes are similar, their belly scales are aligned in similar ways, and the round scales on rainwings could easily be modified into the leaf-like scales on Leafwings. For differences, Leafwings have independently re-evolved plantigrade hind limbs, perhaps to better grasp branches in the abscece of a prehensile tail. Obviously Leafwings evolved leaf-like wings for camouflage. Rainwings and Leafwings diverged before either had a good trait for camouflage beyond being green, so both independently evolved their own camoflauge. Overall it's easy to see how Leafwings and Rainwings share a common ancestor. Now, you may be wondering "what about Nightwings". Well, this evolutionary tree has one key difference from real world evolution, the existence of successful hybridization. This is very likely an animus trait, as all the tribes should be too distantly related to produce successful offspring. I believe that perhaps an animus, at one point, fell in love with a dragon of another tribe. They wanted children, and to solve this the animus enchanted all dragons to be able to produce viable offspring, no matter the tribe. Now, if Nightwings are the result of hybridization, then what are they hybrids of? Sandwings and Skywings. To begin with, the old Nightwing kingdom is very mountainous, much like the average Skywing habitat. The old Nightwing kingdom also borders the Sandwing kingdom. Similarities that Nightwings share with Sandwings include a very similar beak, similar scales on their neck (although Nightwings have a much more rounded pattern), similar wings, their forked tongue, straightish horns, and smooth belly scales. Similarites that Nightwings have with Skywings include small round scales covering their body, large square scales on the front of their limbs, a fairly similar tail, an extra bit of skin on the elbow of their wings, very similar spines running along their backs, and this small set of square scale on the back of their necks. Nightwings evolved from their hybrid ancestor to have mostly black scales (perhaps something from the sandwings, as they can have black scales), a much broader stance with shorter limbs, star patterns on their wings, and plantigrade back feet. Their headshape is also almost a complete middle ground between sandwings and skywings. They also have a unique scale structure on their faces. A thing I'd like to add is a similarity all dragons that live on Pantala share, extremely curvy horns. To that, I say they likely just find those horns really attractive. With Silkwings and Hivewings, it's canonical that they share a common ancestor that diverged when Clearsight arrived, but I like to believe it's slightly more complicated than that. But anyway, a key difference I noticed in Silkwings and Hivewings is that Hivewings are fully Digitagrade while Silkwings are almost Plantigrade. Easy enough explanation, Silkwings need plantigrade feet for walking on silk. However, if adding Nightwing DNA into the genepool is what caused the split between Hivewings and Silkwings, and Nightwings are plantigrade, then what are Hivewings Digitagrade while Silkwings aren't? Well, outside of an in universe explanation it's because their leg structure wasn't thought about, but I believe that it's because Nightwings of Darkstalker's time were actually Digitagrade. Another weird thing is Silkwings have a soft belly like Nightwings do while Hivewings don't, furthering my point that the diversification of Hivewings and Silkwings is far more complicated than we are led to believe. So to sum it up we have Dragons, which diverged into Beetlewings and Pyhrrianforms. Phyrrianforms diverged into Seaforms (seawings and mudwings) and Moutainforms. Mountainforms diverged into Desertforms (Sandwings and Icewings), and Skyforms (Skywings and Jungleforms). Jungleforms diverged into Rainwings and Leafwings. Nightwings are the result of hybridization between Sandwings and Skywings. Anyways thank you for listening to my Ted Talk
A thought I had when reading your section on NightWings is that while you have some plausible theories for them being hybrids, I have an opposite theory. NightWings are the closest in appearance (next to SkyWings ofc) to the 'classic' depiction of a Western dragon. NightWings are a relatively isolationist tribe who seem to have the least amount of special traits that aren't magic based (moon powers). The only Pyrrhian tribes that lack fire are Sea, Ice, and Rain, which is only 3 of 6. I don't see enough similarities between Sky/SandWings and Nightwings to see them being the result of hybridization - even distant - without interference of magic or another tribe. And it's been shown that NightWings had no animus dragons until Darkstalker (long after NightWings were an established tribe), who received his powers from his IceWing lineage and had no offspring. All that being said, I feel like there's a chance NightWings may have evolved pretty much on their own directly from the common ancestor. If we imagine that the Common Ancestor branched out to cover the continent, I could see NightWings potentially evolving around the same time as the Sea and MudWings were on the other side of the continent. The geography of the Old NightWing Kingdom, being so similar to the Skywing Kingdom but with lower elevations and a peninsula that allows them to be less surrounded by enemies and potential additions to the gene pool alike. That said, maybe they aren't a direct descendant of the Common Ancestor, but a direct descendant of SkyWings alone, since they share more in common than either tribe with SandWings. I don't know that much about evolution and genetics though, so I'd love to hear any other ideas or corrections to my ideas that you might have!
@satelliteblues01 It's hard for me to point out the similarities through just words, Ideally I'd point them out in the reference images themselves. Nightwings certainly are the second most classic western depiction of dragons, but within the wings of fire universe that matters little. Sandwings definitely don't look much like a Nightwing at first glance, most shared traits are more subtle like scale pattern. Nightwings splitting off early in the branching is definitely also plausible, although I feel they have too many similar traits to later branches to have branched before they evolved. You made an interesting point about fire that I completely neglected to discuss! The Rainwing and Leafwing common ancestor likely secondarily lost their ability to breathe fire, most likely because of their highly vegetated habitat meaning fire breathing just wasn't beneficial. Icewings probably animus enchanted their fire breath to be frost breath, probably to better use their environment to their advantage. Seawings are the most interesting, since as I discussed their closest relative are Mudwings, which can only breathe fire when warm enough. They likely secondarily lost their fire like the other two, making fire breathing ancestral, with then diverging before firebreath was refined which would explain Mudwings and then Seawings lost the ability altogether. Animus magic is tricky, but a saving grace could just be Nightwings lost the ability before recorded history, therefore they were able to alter their evolution without them even knowing. Thank you for your thoughts!! I enjoyed reading it a lot!
@fennecishere ty for replying, it makes a lot more sense now, and I love the added context for IceWing breath! I also think you could be correct about Flamescales being a Skywing animus enchantment, since we haven't seen any suggestion of Flamescales in the other fire breathing tribes, but it would be really interesting to see regardless. I wonder if Tui will explore that in the future.
@satelliteblues01 np! I don't think Tui will since it likely wasn't thought about when made. I think the canonical reasoning is just that Skywings already have the hottest fire breath of the tribes so there's an unfortunate consequence of that. I don't think any theory I have about dragon evolution will ever be confirmed or was even considered but I still love thinking about it nonetheless! It's just pure coincidence that the traits of the tribes line up in a way that family trees are possible to make. Like I use scale pattern a lot in my analysis but it's likely the artist just had different scale patterns she likes using and didn't think too hard on how it would relate certain tribes to others
Ya know maybe the mud wings kept a sibling connection also because it has a better chance for survival for example elephants kept a connection with their family’s because of the same reason.
Well, maybe, but I think that the "5,000" is in DRAGON years, and so different from human years. I think WoF happens in the FUTURE, because certain landforms are suspiciously similar. I think human were genetically testing, and made a dragon.
This is so cool! I also just wanted to point out that I’m pretty sure it was confirmed by Tui that rain wings natural scale color is green, and that they change colors to look pretty, but not only for breeding purposes. It would make sense for them to have green scales, with being able to blend into the canopy, but they eventually became vegetarians. They probably had to have made this switch relatively recently though, as they do have sharp teeth and were meant to be the apex predator with no natural enemies
Its confirmed that they recently become vegetarians, actually! In the new guidebook there's a RainWing letter from roughly around Darkstalker's time; Page 83 'And yes, I know about your appalling obsession with taming prey, and I would like to know what we are supposed to eat if you insist on turning all our food into pets!'
That would make sense, considering Chameleon's natural color is parrot green- and we know he can't change color
OH MY GOD! Me and my best friend used to play this game where we would be the ancestors of a tribe. I remember mudwings a sky wings and seawings were like the base, when sea and mud mixed it would evolve into rainwings.
It was a fun game to play and I miss the days of my childhood playing pretend.
I saw genetics and immediately felt bad, cause i went down this rabbit hole before and; Silkwings and hivewings are a nightmare to figure out the genetics for.
This is much simpler then figuring out the recessive and dominant genes + letters for 'em.
Yeah I'm not gonna do that- sorry if the thumbnail was a bit misleading.
This is really deep thinking and it’s very interesting, and oh my GOD you are underrated. I could never think so much 😦
Ok, so as a genetics nerd~~~ I also figured out (Hypothetical) color and pattern genetics for the dragon tribes, based in my knowlege of snake genetics. Pretty interesting seeing other's thoughts on how the tribes evolved. I feel like SeaWings didn't eveolve from the ancestor tribe, since I think in book 15 when we get a memory from Cottonmouth it shows a SeaWing, and they have WAY too many special abilities and adaptations to be from the same line. Maybe they did evolve from the ancestors, but they probably split off a good amount of time before the Scorching to live an aquatic lifestyle. Because theres no way they would evolve as many adaptations that fast.
I imagine the dragons already had vast variations depending on thier home regions, as I imagine they wouldn't move around very often if they could help it. So for example, the ancestor tribe could've had family lines in the Rain forest that more closely resemble today's RainWings than other ancestors. Also other family lines better equipped for the desert, etc. Beacuse I imagine if they could help it they didn't move around and mated with whoever was next door when breeding season came.
Thus you would get higher concentrations of traits in the region they they're best suited to. This could explain how the tribes differentiated so fast. They already had basically tribes and different species, all they had to do was unite during the Scorching.
There were seawings pre-scorching??? Well that pretty much destroys my standing theory. The next video is gonna be a doosey.
@@2AlatoArtsAlot im not 100% sure, but i think sea dragons are mentioned by cottonmouth
@@golden_opal6050 well "sea dragons" is pretty vauge. I'll have to look into it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
About to watch the video. I wanted to mention, I like the way she makes certain species appear related. Like skywings and rainwings and such. Makes you feel smart for noticing and makes the world feel interconnected, like everything came from somewhere.
This was amazing ! It's great and so helpful ! I love the content you make and can't wait to see more! Remember to never give up ! One day this channel will grow amazingly big ! Keep going! Can't wait for part two !
God, i eat this stuff up. After this series is done, if you want to continue to dive into genetics, you could do tribe headcannons!
Omg you deserve so many more subs this is so cool!! Can’t wait to see part 2!
I need a part 2… NEED!
This is an interesting theory video. I never thought this hard about where the dragons actually come from.
Same I had a few ideas but it was nice to hear a full detailed version from someone else :)
Figuring out the original dragon would be very hard but They Most likely weren't multicolored, they'd be more natural colors like browns, greens, and black and white. Multicolored dragons would come from mutations(since that's all Evolution is.)
Very interesting theroy/au! New sub! Seriously though, you deserve way more subs and views.
This is a great theory!! Excited for part 2 :D
I love this video it’s well thought out and I can tell a lot of research and time went into this
I LOVE thinking about the evolution of the dragon tribes!! Mostly cause I love evolution! While it's implied that pre scorching dragons share traits that would later become distinct for each tribe, that does not give enough time for diversification AT ALL, so personally I just say that hybrids were far more common pre scorching. I studied the traits of each tribe and came up with an evolutionary tree!
All dragons have a common ancestor, my personal theory being that this ancestor is an archesaur that survived the k-pg extinction, so their closest relatives would be Crocodiles, Dinosaurs, and Pterosaurs (closest living relatives would be crocodiles and living dinosaurs, which are birds). I believe that they began without wings and wings are actually the very first animus trait, seeing as 6 limbs are next to impossible to evolve from a world with only 4 limbed animals. Same with all 8 limbed dragons, either an addition to the original animus trait or all tribes started with 8 and lost 2 over time. Regardless, this would lead to Beetlewings being the fist branch off of the tree. All 8 limbed dragons are the most distantly related to the 6 limbed dragons. And we know how Silkwings and Hivewings split.
Next we have Pyrrhianforms, including all 6 limbed dragon species. Studying the anatomy of the tribes, I concluded that the next branching would be Seaforms, which would include Seawings and Mudwings. Both are plantigrade, which means their hind legs have all toes touching the ground. They both have a similar stature. Mudwings are known for being able to hold their breath for up to an hour. Their horns curl in a similar way. Their tails are fairly thick, used for combat and underwater locomotion. Their belly scales are aligned in similar ways. With Seawings, I believe that their gills are yet another animus trait. No vertebrate has ever been able to re-evolve the ability to breathe underwater, much less gills. They likely already had an extended lung capacity similar to mudwings, and they likely already had their bioluminescence for underwater communication. Mudwings have their own traits that evolved after the split from their common ancestor. Their nostrils migrated farther up on their snout to allow for crocodillian like wading, an instance of convergant evolution. Their jaws became much stronger, leading to likely the strongest bite of all the dragons, and their scales became much more rugged for protection likely from their prey, as they tend to take on fairly dangerous prey.
All other tribes are within the Moutainforms, and within the Moutainforms the Desertforms split off. This split includes the common ancestor of very ironically, Icewings and Sandwings. I believe that they are more closely related to each other than they are to all other tribes. Their similarities start with their scale structure. Both are known for being spiky, and especially on their necks you and really see how similar their scale pattern is. Their scales are really similar. Both have fairly straight horns, although sandwings have a slight curve. Both are known to have dark or black eyes. Both have weapons on their tails, both are digitagrade (which I believe is ancestral to all Mountainforms), and both have a structure running down their backs. The Sandwing sail is likely a highly modified structure from something that would look similar to the spikes of an icewing in their common ancestor. Icewings have elongated, clustered spikes running down their back and ending in a spiked tail. The Sandwing stinger likely began as a modified version of these spikes that was eventually animus enchanted to act like a scorpian tail. Icewings also have their own animus feature, blue blood. Whether the original enchantment was made by an animus dragonet who didn't realize what they were doing or as a way to blend into the ice when injured in unclear, but it definitely isn't natural. All vertebrates have red blood. Icewings also likely secondarily lost their nose horn, which is likely ancestral to mountainforms.
Next would be the Skyforms, this would include Skywings and what I dub Jungleforms. We all know the similarities between Skywings and Rainwings, especially since you covered it in this video. I'll skip over comparing them, as well as say I agree that Rainwing venom is very likely an animus trait. I also believe that Flamescales would be an animus trait, which would both explain why animus dragonets were killed as well as the result from animus dragons. Likely Skywings see flamescales as an animus curse (or at least they did before the information was lost). But overall, your analysis of Rainwings and Skywings is similar to how I see them.
Now Jungleforms, which would include Rainwings and Leafwings. That's right, Leafwings are Pyhrrianform. There are MANY similarities in Rainwings and Leafwings. For starters, we know Rainwings are base green, which all Leafwings are. Their horns curve in a very similar way, their body shapes are similar, their belly scales are aligned in similar ways, and the round scales on rainwings could easily be modified into the leaf-like scales on Leafwings. For differences, Leafwings have independently re-evolved plantigrade hind limbs, perhaps to better grasp branches in the abscece of a prehensile tail. Obviously Leafwings evolved leaf-like wings for camouflage. Rainwings and Leafwings diverged before either had a good trait for camouflage beyond being green, so both independently evolved their own camoflauge. Overall it's easy to see how Leafwings and Rainwings share a common ancestor.
Now, you may be wondering "what about Nightwings". Well, this evolutionary tree has one key difference from real world evolution, the existence of successful hybridization. This is very likely an animus trait, as all the tribes should be too distantly related to produce successful offspring. I believe that perhaps an animus, at one point, fell in love with a dragon of another tribe. They wanted children, and to solve this the animus enchanted all dragons to be able to produce viable offspring, no matter the tribe. Now, if Nightwings are the result of hybridization, then what are they hybrids of? Sandwings and Skywings. To begin with, the old Nightwing kingdom is very mountainous, much like the average Skywing habitat. The old Nightwing kingdom also borders the Sandwing kingdom. Similarities that Nightwings share with Sandwings include a very similar beak, similar scales on their neck (although Nightwings have a much more rounded pattern), similar wings, their forked tongue, straightish horns, and smooth belly scales. Similarites that Nightwings have with Skywings include small round scales covering their body, large square scales on the front of their limbs, a fairly similar tail, an extra bit of skin on the elbow of their wings, very similar spines running along their backs, and this small set of square scale on the back of their necks. Nightwings evolved from their hybrid ancestor to have mostly black scales (perhaps something from the sandwings, as they can have black scales), a much broader stance with shorter limbs, star patterns on their wings, and plantigrade back feet. Their headshape is also almost a complete middle ground between sandwings and skywings. They also have a unique scale structure on their faces.
A thing I'd like to add is a similarity all dragons that live on Pantala share, extremely curvy horns. To that, I say they likely just find those horns really attractive. With Silkwings and Hivewings, it's canonical that they share a common ancestor that diverged when Clearsight arrived, but I like to believe it's slightly more complicated than that. But anyway, a key difference I noticed in Silkwings and Hivewings is that Hivewings are fully Digitagrade while Silkwings are almost Plantigrade. Easy enough explanation, Silkwings need plantigrade feet for walking on silk. However, if adding Nightwing DNA into the genepool is what caused the split between Hivewings and Silkwings, and Nightwings are plantigrade, then what are Hivewings Digitagrade while Silkwings aren't? Well, outside of an in universe explanation it's because their leg structure wasn't thought about, but I believe that it's because Nightwings of Darkstalker's time were actually Digitagrade. Another weird thing is Silkwings have a soft belly like Nightwings do while Hivewings don't, furthering my point that the diversification of Hivewings and Silkwings is far more complicated than we are led to believe.
So to sum it up we have Dragons, which diverged into Beetlewings and Pyhrrianforms. Phyrrianforms diverged into Seaforms (seawings and mudwings) and Moutainforms. Mountainforms diverged into Desertforms (Sandwings and Icewings), and Skyforms (Skywings and Jungleforms). Jungleforms diverged into Rainwings and Leafwings. Nightwings are the result of hybridization between Sandwings and Skywings.
Anyways thank you for listening to my Ted Talk
so many things i want to say without spoiling the part 2.
A thought I had when reading your section on NightWings is that while you have some plausible theories for them being hybrids, I have an opposite theory. NightWings are the closest in appearance (next to SkyWings ofc) to the 'classic' depiction of a Western dragon. NightWings are a relatively isolationist tribe who seem to have the least amount of special traits that aren't magic based (moon powers). The only Pyrrhian tribes that lack fire are Sea, Ice, and Rain, which is only 3 of 6. I don't see enough similarities between Sky/SandWings and Nightwings to see them being the result of hybridization - even distant - without interference of magic or another tribe. And it's been shown that NightWings had no animus dragons until Darkstalker (long after NightWings were an established tribe), who received his powers from his IceWing lineage and had no offspring. All that being said, I feel like there's a chance NightWings may have evolved pretty much on their own directly from the common ancestor. If we imagine that the Common Ancestor branched out to cover the continent, I could see NightWings potentially evolving around the same time as the Sea and MudWings were on the other side of the continent. The geography of the Old NightWing Kingdom, being so similar to the Skywing Kingdom but with lower elevations and a peninsula that allows them to be less surrounded by enemies and potential additions to the gene pool alike. That said, maybe they aren't a direct descendant of the Common Ancestor, but a direct descendant of SkyWings alone, since they share more in common than either tribe with SandWings.
I don't know that much about evolution and genetics though, so I'd love to hear any other ideas or corrections to my ideas that you might have!
@satelliteblues01 It's hard for me to point out the similarities through just words, Ideally I'd point them out in the reference images themselves. Nightwings certainly are the second most classic western depiction of dragons, but within the wings of fire universe that matters little. Sandwings definitely don't look much like a Nightwing at first glance, most shared traits are more subtle like scale pattern. Nightwings splitting off early in the branching is definitely also plausible, although I feel they have too many similar traits to later branches to have branched before they evolved.
You made an interesting point about fire that I completely neglected to discuss! The Rainwing and Leafwing common ancestor likely secondarily lost their ability to breathe fire, most likely because of their highly vegetated habitat meaning fire breathing just wasn't beneficial. Icewings probably animus enchanted their fire breath to be frost breath, probably to better use their environment to their advantage.
Seawings are the most interesting, since as I discussed their closest relative are Mudwings, which can only breathe fire when warm enough. They likely secondarily lost their fire like the other two, making fire breathing ancestral, with then diverging before firebreath was refined which would explain Mudwings and then Seawings lost the ability altogether.
Animus magic is tricky, but a saving grace could just be Nightwings lost the ability before recorded history, therefore they were able to alter their evolution without them even knowing.
Thank you for your thoughts!! I enjoyed reading it a lot!
@fennecishere ty for replying, it makes a lot more sense now, and I love the added context for IceWing breath! I also think you could be correct about Flamescales being a Skywing animus enchantment, since we haven't seen any suggestion of Flamescales in the other fire breathing tribes, but it would be really interesting to see regardless. I wonder if Tui will explore that in the future.
@satelliteblues01 np! I don't think Tui will since it likely wasn't thought about when made. I think the canonical reasoning is just that Skywings already have the hottest fire breath of the tribes so there's an unfortunate consequence of that. I don't think any theory I have about dragon evolution will ever be confirmed or was even considered but I still love thinking about it nonetheless! It's just pure coincidence that the traits of the tribes line up in a way that family trees are possible to make. Like I use scale pattern a lot in my analysis but it's likely the artist just had different scale patterns she likes using and didn't think too hard on how it would relate certain tribes to others
Ya know maybe the mud wings kept a sibling connection also because it has a better chance for survival for example elephants kept a connection with their family’s because of the same reason.
Well, maybe, but I think that the "5,000" is in DRAGON years, and so different from human years. I think WoF happens in the FUTURE, because certain landforms are suspiciously similar. I think human were genetically testing, and made a dragon.
yesss!
probs inbreeding and i think that in the books they even say that hybrids breed over and over they can become a tribe