Have our dragons grown larger?

[Zero Angel]

If you're willing to go as far as to say that the Leviathan and Behemoth are dragons of sort, their size should be obvious.

One of my favorite dragon myths is that of the Tarasque, who is also huge and depicted as such.

If we're going to count Behemoth and Leviathan (which I am down with), then we definitely should count Bahamut and Falak--Bahamut is larger than the world and Falak (I think) is even larger. I also love the Tarasque.

Science talk: As small as a T-Rex's arm might be in comparison to the actual thing, they're extremely muscular and powerful (though rather useless). No way any man could pull its arm off, not even in his wildest exploits.

I saw a t-shirt the other day that had a T-rex on it and the text, "If you're happy and you know it clap your...oh".

A lot of those aren't really dragons, though. Leviathan and Behemoth probably refers to a whale and an ox, respectively.

That's a pretty definitive answer about something that has been argued for the last 2000 years. I'm fine with them being whales and oxes, but I also think whales = dragons back then, and a monstrous ox (or elephant) can be interpreted as a dragon too.

Though, actually, if you look close at mythology you may find that the "dragon antagonist" symbolism seems to have developed out of an earlier "serpent antagonist" symbolism.

Antagonist snakes is a very common theme in mythology. There's Apep, Jormungandr, Python, Yamata no Orochi, Tiamat and the snake in the Garden of Eden. They are all depicted as serpents, often monsterous ones, and they are all killed or otherwise defeated by a god or divine hero.

Eventually, the serpents became dragons, but they kept their original symbolism - that of a mighty adversary of the just and virtuous, whom must be overcome and defeated. It's really quite interesting.

Here too, I feel that serpents = dragons from the get-go, let alone as it developed. Also, I always believed Tiamat had been portrayed as a dragon from the beginning, but recently my research has caused me to think it is only later that she became associated with dragons. She was primordial chaos (which other dragons share with her), but not associated with dragons until after the fact from my understanding.