Berk's Forumvine

Not sure. Im not a scientist, I am not very well learned in areas of wind displacement and how much power is required for hovering to work.

But it feels odd for me because of Toothless’s shape and how he normally flies.

Hes based of soaring birds. His flight is very reminiscent of eagles and vultures. And sometimes falcons and hawks or crows. These are all birds that are pretty much constantly flying forwards if not coming in for a landing. If they do “hover”, it seems to be for short periods of time, with their body tilted upwards, like around a bird feeder.

The way they have toothless hovering, he is generally completely horizontal, and just flapping his wings downward, and hanging there. Not only does he just plain LOOK to heavy for his wings to support him like that. His wings are huge, and cant flap very fast. Not to mention, he is long. He’s got his tail just…hanging there in that event. A bunch of dead weight. His tail fins are for steering, they don’t flap. And certainly wouldn’t do him any good in hovering in one place like that.

To my knowledge, the only bird that can hover in spot like that is a hummingbird. Hummingbirds flap their wings so fast we need a high speed camera to see it and they have to be constantly eating to even support that amount of energy use. Also, they are generally upright when doing so. And theyre tiny and light. Insects can do this too. Which is why Meatlug actually looks ok while hovering. Because her flight is reminiscent of a bumble bee. Itty bitty wings working a million miles an hour to keep a big round body in the air.

I’m fairly certain Toothless needs to have some form of forward motion to stay in the air for any real period of time. He is a glider. He rides the wind. Lift keeps him up when hes in motion.



I’m pretty sure this doenst apply while hovering. Hovering is just displacing air via flapping. Its gotta be fast, and its gotta be balanced, and the creature, essentially, has to be MADE for it. Toothless is NOT built for hovering. Hes built for soaring.

My general rule for these types of things is

If an eagle, vulture, hawk, or falcon cant do it, Toothless probably cant do it either.

Its kind of how theres NO WAY meatlug would ever be able to glide. I mean, theres probably no way she should be able to fly anyway, but the animations they used and the nature they drew from made her flight at least believable, if implausible. It LOOKED good. But, say, if they just had her with her wings spread, gliding around, not really flapping constantly. It wouldn’t be believable at all.

Some animators, Dreamworks thankfully not included, use wings as kind of…they have wings so they can fly. But in reality, the type of wing, the body build, the size, and movement, all affect the flight of the character. Which is why the way they animate it can really make or break the believability. If you break the believability TOO far, you no longer have a character thats flying. You have a character thats floating and happens to have wings.

Again, I am NOT a scientist. I am terrible at physics. I’m just going on observation. I watch birds. I love the concept of flight. I don’t know the numbers or exact science. But something about Toothless HOVERING just breaks the reality a little too much for me.

As I said in my previous post, I tend to get a little too picky about this stuff in cartoons But the closer they shoot for realism, the more inconsistencies like this stand out.