Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It has large frills on its head.

And look! It has grown wings! It must be close to maturing.

Young dragons are relatively defenseless. They are born with relatively soft scales, which are shed and replaced with harder ones as the hatchling matures. Once a hatchling’s wings grow in, it typically marks the beginning of maturation. At this point they are often capable of hunting on their own and are usually left alone by their mother.

Behold, seeker of the dragon lore, Kuhawe of the Frilled Green Dragons. In her case, her eternal hatchling state, possibly due to not being raised by dragons but humans, saved her the sad trouble her declining breed is faced with. She never grew to the mating age and thus was not confronted with the inability to produce eggs of her own breed or any at all. She was found on an expedition by some naturalists who, when discovering that the egg was still alive, gave it to a zoo. There she grew rather attached to her caretakers after hatching and even began breaking from her terrarium to follow them around. As she seemed to present no danger at all, they soon let her have her will. She became the official zoo mascot and grew so used to humans that she lets visitors touch an pat her rather willingly these days.