It is estimated that everyone has heard a saying: "Donkey meat on the ground, dragon meat in the sky." Donkey meat is probably eaten by most people, and in the winter, a bowl of donkey meat soup is under the belly, and the whole person is cute. So what kind of meat is this "dragon meat"? In fact, dragon meat is a kind of meat called "flying dragon bird".
The "flying dragon bird" is actually a flower-tailed hazelnut, which is a bird that only exists in the Northeast Daxing'an Mountains, belonging to the chicken suborder, grouse family, hazelnut genus, relatively rare. In ancient times, they belonged to the imperial tribute, and it was rumored that the Qianlong Emperor liked to eat the most, so the common people were not common.
As for the flower tail hazel chicken can have such a domineering nickname from its super domineering claws. In ancient times, the emperor of the dynasty was honored as the True Dragon Tianzi, the dragon before the Yuan Dynasty was basically three-clawed, and after the Qing Dynasty, the dragon became five-clawed, and the "nine" and "five" symbolized the authority of the emperor, which was explained in the "Zhou Yi Qian": "Nine five, flying dragon in the sky, see the lord." "And the flower tail hazel chicken has five toes, and secondly, the flower tail hazel chicken is rare and difficult to find, plus it is a bird, so the flying dragon bird came like this."
The flower-tailed hazel chicken is not very large, the adult body length is only about 40 cm, and the weight is about 900 grams. In general, they are both male and female activities together to warn each other, can fly and run, so carnivores can rarely hunt them, the threat mainly comes from birds of prey such as goshawks.
Before the Qing Dynasty, the number of flying dragon birds was still considerable, but from the 1970s onwards, large areas of forest were cut down, and the meat of the hazel chicken was believed to nourish the kidneys and aphrodisiacs, so it was used and over-hunted. The density of flower-tailed hazel chickens in Changbai Mountain has dropped by 84% and is almost endangered, and they are currently national second-level protected animals. Don't let your appetite go too fast...