Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It has a large, shield-like object at the end of its tail that it uses for protection.

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.

Guardia found Benny's egg while he was on duty in the Vulforest, and quickly brought it back to the Capitol for safekeeping. Benny stayed safe and warm, hatched quite without difficulty, and immediately latched onto the first living thing he saw. That living thing happened to be a tree, and his health and sanity immediately went to pot. He refused to eat until Dag Finn herself magically stopped his aging. He refused to speak unless the other dragons would listen to what "Tree" had to say first. The tree had taken on a life of its own in Benny's mind, and Benny was its sole protector. Now, Benny is a fairly normal hatchling, whose only duty now is to guard the Capitoltree, the magical tree that sprouted in a pot in the hatchery, and now grows in the center of the castle square and guards the very spirit of the city.