The Australian national science agency has apologised to a 7-year-old girl for not doing enough research into the existence of dragons.
The girl, named Sophie, wrote a letter to the "lovely scientists" at CSIRO complaining that the teams there had been slacking for their lack of work into the Wyvern.
"Hello Lovely Scientist
My name is Sophie and I am 7 years old. My dad told me about the scientists at the CSIRO. Would it be possible if you can make a dragon for me. I would like it if you could but if you can’t thats fine.
I would call it toothless if it was a girl and if it is a boy I would name it Stuart.
I would keep it in my special green grass area where there are lots of space. I would feed it raw fish and I would put a collar on it. If it got hurt I would bandage it if it hurt himself. I would play with it every weekend when there is no school.
Love from Sophie"
There was also a picture:
Receiving the letter the team there presumably burst into tears at the total cute overload of it all, and then penned this reply on its blog:
"We’ve been doing science since 1926 and we’re quite proud of what we have achieved. We’ve put polymer banknotes in your wallet, insect repellent on your limbs and Wi-Fi in your devices. But we’ve missed something.
There are no dragons.
Over the past 87 odd years we have not been able to create a dragon or dragon eggs. We have sighted an eastern bearded dragon at one of our telescopes, observed dragonflies and even measured body temperatures of the mallee dragon. But our work has never ventured into dragons of the mythical, fire breathing variety.
And for this Australia, we are sorry."
It's an okay answer - but CSIRO forgot to mention that dragons do exist, but they're all in New Zealand. Obviously.