From the brains behind Brains On, this is The Moment of Um.

Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Joy Dolo.

Um.

So I host a history podcast for kids called Forever Ago, because I love learning about how people lived in the past.

The other night, I was thinking about how people entertained themselves centuries ago.

Before TV or radio or audiobooks, people told each other stories.

Stories about far away lands, adventures, romances, and fantastical beasts, like dragons.

Obviously dragons are the coolest mythical beast because they're magic and they can fly and breathe

fire. I wish I could see a dragon in real life from a distance with a fire extinguisher. You know what I mean?

I mean, I know dragons aren't real, but if they did exist, would they be able to fly and breathe fire like the dragons and stories?

Are there real life animals who can do stuff like that? Sophia was wondering this too.

My name is Sophia. I'm from Lexington, Kentucky. And if dragons

were real, how would they fly around and breathe fire? I'm Professor Mark Luch. I work at the

University of Hull in the UK. So how did dragons fly and how do they breathe fire? Well, that's a

fabulous question. And you could come up with all sorts of magical answers, but I'm going to

try and focus on some biologically plausible answers. So I'm going to look at what other animals do and see whether we can, you know, use some

the things that they do and apply them to dragons.

Well, firstly, the flying thing.

I suppose the nearest thing to a dragon would be the pterosaurs back, you know, 70 million

years ago

that flew around

and glided around the earth

...