The world of dragon-breeding by no means revolves around genetics! In fact, most people who own a dragon-breeding weyr/caer/agency base offspring more towards creating 'the right dragon' for 'the right person'. Parent's colours rarely have anything to do with their offspring!

This brief guide is for those of you who'd like to add an element of realism in the offspring that you create and colour. It is by no means a set of rules written in stone, nor do any of you who are not interested in simple genetics and trait-breeding have to follow or even heed them. That said, let's take a quick look at some basic genetics, as a refresher for those of you who know what's going on, and a crash course for those of you who don't.

In the Beginning...

Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, was the first to discover that genes are passed from parent to offspring. He discovered this through experimentation, by cross-pollinating pea-plants and noting traits in the resultant offspring. His theories are the basis from which we'll work off of, once we get into a short tutorial.

What is a Gene?

For our purposes, a gene is a piece of information that we read, then apply to a dragon image. Genes come in pairs, with one being dominant, and the other being recessive. A dominant gene will show up in the dragon, whereas a recessive gene will be hidden. For a recessive gene to actually show up on a dragon, the dragon has to have two recessive genes in a single pair! Phewf, this is getting complicated already! Let's use an example to see how it's done.

For further reference, a gene will usually be shown as a letter, or a group of letters and numbers. Don't worry, you'll be able to find a key to refer to, to puzzle out a genetic code.

Let's say we have a green dragon. The Green-gene, as in most dragon-breeding places, is always dominant to the Blue-gene, for example. This green dragon might have a genetic code that looks something like this:

Gg

Where the capitol G 'G' represents green, and the lower-case g 'g' represents blue. It makes sense, right? A green dragon could show up from either a pair of genes that looks like this: GG, or this: Gg, while a blue dragon would only result from a pair of genes that look like this: gg. Try as you might, with those two genes, that's the only way you'll see a blue dragon!

Now this green dragon, let's say that she (assuming that it is a 'she'), has offspring with a blue dragon (who's genetic code looks like: gg)! Here's how passing on the genes works!

Green Dragon (GG) x Blue Dragon (gg)
Pairing up each gene from the green dragon with one gene from the blue dragon, we get these results:

Gg (a green dragon)
Gg (a green dragon)
Gg (a green dragon)
Gg (a green dragon)

So, if this pair of dragons were to have offspring, every single dragonet would be green, no questions asked. It's certainly not like dragon-breeding as usual, is it?

For kicks, lets mate one of those offspring dragons with another blue, and see what happens.

Green Dragon (Gg) x Blue Dragon (gg)
Again, we pair up each gene from the green dragon with one from the blue, and get something like this:

Gg (a green dragon)
Gg (a green dragon)
gg (a blue dragon!)
gg (another blue dragon!)

Here, if a dragonet is born from these two parents, there's a fifty/fifty chance that it will be either a green or a blue! See the difference that just one little 'g' gene can make? Now, I know those of you who know a thing or two about breeding dragons are asking "what about other colours? what if there's more then two?" Well, here's the answer, but it's a little more tricky.

Genes in order of Dominance

When there are a number of different colours to be seen in a dragon breed (Old-World dragons, for example), we switch from your simple Capitol/lower-case scheme, to something a little more complex. Here, we take all of the colours, and put them in order of dominance. Let me give you a quick key as an example.

Old World Colours
PEC01 = Green
PEC02 = Blue
PEC03 = Brown
PEC04 = Bronze
PEC05 = Gold

"PEC? What's that?" The letters behind the numbers, here, are used to determine what breed and what trait are being described. 'PE' stands for 'Pern' while 'C' stands for colour. It may not make much sense just now, but once other breeds of dragons are brought into the mix, it helps to sort everything out! Anyways, in this case, there are five distinct colours that a dragon might show. Let's take a look at a brown dragon, to see how these overly-long gene-bits are used.

PEC03PEC04 (A brown dragon)

This fellow has the brown gene (PEC03) and a bronze gene (PEC04). Looks simple enough, right? Now, let's cross him with two different greens, just to see the probable results of his offspring.

Green Dragon (PEC01PEC02) x Brown Dragon (PEC03PEC04)
Let's pair up each gene from the Green with one each from the brown, just like in the previous two examples. This is what we'll get:

PEC01PEC03 (a green dragon)
PEC01PEC04 (a green dragon)
PEC02PEC03 (a blue dragon)
PEC02PEC04 (a blue dragon)

Now, how come we only got greens and blues, if one of the parents was a brown? The answer lies in our lovely Green dragon-mother's genes. Her pair of genes (PEC01PEC02) will create green and blue gene-halves only, which are dominant to both the brown and bronze gene-halves. So, if these two dragons were to mate, only greens and blues would show up.

What if we take another green and mate her with that same brown?

Green Dragon (PEC01PEC05) x Brown Dragon (PEC03PEC04)
Pair them all up, and you get:

PEC01PEC03 (a green dragon)
PEC01PEC04 (a green dragon)
PEC03PEC05 (a brown dragon)
PEC04PEC05 (a bronze dragon!)

This time, we get your usual fifty percent chance of a green dragonet, but notice that the last two are a brown and a bronze, respectively. Again, the reason for this is in the Green mother's genes! In this green's gene pair, the recessive gene is gold (PEC05), which is recessive to brown (PEC03) and bronze (PEC04). Because it's recessive, brown and bronze can show up in the offspring! Pretty nifty, huh?

Okay, so this doesn't seem very much like how dragons breed in your usual agency, does it? I mean, who ever heard of a hatching where only greens and blues show up? Well, if you're still interested in how genetics can possibly account for some of the spectacular offspring born at different agencies, read on to the next page.