<div align="center"><strong><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 2em;">Dragons Pern - Psychic abilities</span><br/><br/>Despite their relatively low intelligence, fire-lizards communicate through a form of weak telepathy. They also imprint on the first individual who feeds them after they hatch, creating a telepathic bond with them; the Pernese call this phenomenon "Impression". In creating dragons, Kitti Ping intensified the creatures' telepathy and gave them a strong instinctive drive to Impress to a human. Upon hatching, each dragonet chooses one of the humans present and Impresses to that person; from that moment on, the pair are in a constant state of telepathic contact for as long as they both live. Dragons also use telepathy to communicate with each other and with fire-lizards. They are capable of speaking telepathically to humans besides their own riders, but most are disinclined to do so except under unusual circumstances.<br/><br/>Dragons and fire-lizards can also teleport. They do this by briefly entering a hyperspace dimension known as between. Humans experience between as an extremely cold, airless, black void. After spending no more than eight seconds in between, the dragon or fire-lizard can re-emerge anywhere on Pern, along with any passengers or cargo they carried. This ability evolved in fire-lizards as a defense against Thread; not only does it allow them to quickly escape from Threadfall, but the intense cold of between kills any Thread that has already burrowed into them. If a dragon attempts to teleport without a clear mental image of the place where they intend to reappear, they can simply fail to emerge from between.<br/><br/>Going between allows dragons to travel through time as well as space, as long as they have a clear picture of what a particular place looked like (or will look like) at the desired time. However, the practice is highly dangerous to both dragon and rider and is severely restricted. Existing in two places at once for extended periods of time, or in close proximity, causes severe weakness and psychological disturbance for humans. In addition, while teleporting through space always takes the same amount of time, when a dragon travels through time, the amount of time they spend in between increases depending on how long ago or how far in the future the destination is. Thus, travelling to remote times poses severe dangers from hypothermia and oxygen deprivation.<br/><br/>The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern states that dragons defecate while between. This idea originated with a statement by Anne McCaffrey herself, in answer to a fan's question about the subject at a con. However, McCaffrey may have been joking when she first said this. As the idea has never appeared in any of the Pern novels, it cannot be considered definitively canonical. If true, it would eventually cause serious environmental problems<br/>for the planet, as large amounts of Pern's organic matter would be regularly disappearing into an alternate dimension.<br/><br/>Dragons - and, very likely, fire-lizards as well - are also capable of psychokinesis. This helps to explain how such large creatures are capable of flight. However, even the dragons themselves were unaware of this ability until two and a half millennia after their species' creation.<br/><br/>Found at http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Dragons_Pern_-_Psychic_abilities/id/1338481 (http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Dragons_Pern_-_Psychic_abilities/id/1338481)<br/></strong></div>