Fire Breathers?

[SketchTurner]

I know it would be extremely difficult in practice if not impossible but could an animal (in theory) be modified to breathe fire as an attack or defence? If the animal could be modified to produce a flammable organic liquid in a gland in its mouth and have an 'ignition spark' (generated in a similar way to how the electric eel makes electricity) at the opening of its mouth, then could it not create an aerosol of fuel and ignite it when provoked?

[ydoaPs]

i can shoot my salivary glands. if the creature had one with one chemical and the other with one that reacts with the first in the correct manner, it would work. it doesn't sound that farfetched. could happen

[Lance]

Methane is flammable so I think it would be more realistic to shoot a ball of fire out of the ass rather than the mouth.

[SketchTurner]

Ha I could do that with just a box of matches - no need for gene modification

[ydoaPs]

perhaps fire-breathing dragons did exist. how do we know they didn't? hell, even species of which we have fossils may have breathed fire. it isn't like two small glands in the mouth would fossilize

[Skye]

Bombardier beetles anyone?

[Glider]

My thoughts exactly.

 

Perhaps also, you could start with principle of the spitting cobra and GM it so that the venom it produced was phosphorus based. That way, the stream on venom would spontaneously ignite on contact with oxygen and there would be no need for an ingition spark.

[bloodhound]

I had my first sip of Bombardier yesterday. Not bad.