those of horses. On their heads they have small headknobs, similar to those of giraffes, and no visible ears. They have multifaceted eyes that change color depending on the dragon's mood. Unlike the dragons of Terran legend, they have a smooth hide rather than scales; the texture of their skin is described as being reminiscent of suede with a spicy, sweet scent when clean. They are described as having forked tail ends with a defecation opening between the forks; however, most artistic renderings depict their tails as having spade-shaped tips. The dragons usually get from one place to another by utilizing a teleportation process known as "going between". Kitti Ping designed the dragons to gradually increase in size with each generation until they reached pre-programmed final dimensions. The dragons of the first Hatchings were not much bigger than horses. By the Sixth Pass (1500 years later) they had reached their programmed size and remained at that size until a single isolated dragon population suffered severe inbreeding, resulting in much larger beasts. In the Ninth Pass, in which most of the novels have been set, the largest Pernese dragon on record, Ramoth, hatched. According to the novel All the Weyrs of Pern these dragons were roughly three times the size of the largest first-generation dragons. Ramoth's great size is often attributed to mutation and the genetic isolation of Benden Weyr for over 400 years (or Turns). Ramoth, at full length, was forty-five meters long. However The Dragon Lover's Guide to Pern is erroneous on this point and Anne has said herself on multiple occasions that her dragons are measured in feet not meters. Ramoth is intended by the author to be 45 feet long. As referenced in this quote from the 1979 Documentary series "Time out of Mind: episode 4 Anne McCaffrey" available on youtube. "...well you'd want to catch a parasite that just burrowed and fed on any living thing, before it hit the ground and there was your rationale for dragons. But you couldn't have small dragons you'd have to have big ones so I decided 35-40ft that seems an economical size." All the Weyrs of Pern, AIVAS, an artificial intelligence still in operation after all this time, notes that all of the primary Benden dragons, Ramoth, Mnementh and Canth, are notably larger than Kitti Ping's specified end-size of the dragon species. Newly hatched dragons are the size of