Canon Information:

Firelizards cannot speak, and aren't very smart. Think of a gold firelizard as a smart cat that can fly and share its emotions with you. Color is directly related to how intelligent the firelizard is. All lesser colors listen to golds, no exceptions. There's no such thing as a "rebellious" firelizard. Greens are the least intelligent, and are usually the hardest to train. Be careful entrusting important messages to greens...the message might not reach its destination! Golds are the most intelligent, and can be trained well to deliver messages and perform special tasks. They communicate using emotions, and in the case of the more intelligent 'lizards, they may use limited images that can be difficult to understand. After all, they're the fraction of the size of a human, and see very differently, in different spectra and through faceted eyes.

Description

Dragons, whers, and firelizards are all man-made descendants of the indigenous dragonet (so dubbed by Sorka Hanrahan in Dragonsdrawn).

According to the Dragonlover's Guide to Pern, basic dragonet features are:

1. Boron-crystalline structured wings, which are translucent sails stretched over an "arm" similar to the configuration of a bat's wing.
2. Three-toed rear limbs
3. Tridactyl foreclaws, configured as a single clawed toe that folds back against two rigid pincers (an excellent configuration for fishing)
4. When the firelizards were engineered, the following changes were made:
5. Tridactyl claws were altered to a pentadactyl -- five-fingered -- configuration
6. Improved empathy/telepathy
7. More pronounced headknobs (which came with time)

The improved firelizards ultimately wiped out the dragonets, but in the earlier colonial days, it was not uncommon for colonists to have firelizards of both species.
Regarding firelizard age: "Curiously, once a dragonet has lived through its first moments, centuries might pass before it dies. Dragonets were not designed for 'planned obsolescence,' as humans were. A dragonet fifty years old looks the same as one just into maturity... Over time, one fertile female could repopulate the planet. Unless trauma occurred, it would live on and on" (DLG 29).

Golds and green weren't tampered with the same way dragons were -- both types of females can lay eggs, although greens lay smaller clutches comprised almost entirely of chromatics (some would argue that a green-bronze pairing could result in a bronze, but I'm not sure), and typically abandon their eggs; golds lay larger clutches that can carry the entire range of colors (although a gold-brown pair is extremely unlikely to produce a gold, which aren't even guaranteed with gold-bronze pairings), and have much better maternal instincts than greens.

"A newly hatched dragonet is only a few inches long. When one reaches full growth, it is the length of a woman's arm from nose tip to tail tip" (29). Now, this implies that, if green dragons are the standard for a "dragonlength", being the most numerous of the dragons, then it's green firelizards who grow to this length. I can't imagine that firelizards have the same drastic size gaps that dragons do, but if you figure that a green is maybe three fourths the size of a gold, and that a woman's arm is two and a half feet (30 inches) in length, you get something like this for the breakdown:

• Gold: 38-40 inches in length with a wingspan of 63-67 inches
• Bronze: 36-38 inches in length with a wingspan of 60-63 inches
• Brown: 34-36 inches in length with a wingspan of 57-60 inches
• Blue: 32-34 inches in length with a wingspan of 53-57 inches
• Green: 30-32 inches in length with a wingspan of 50-53 inches

Clutches

Firelizards, as you should already know, lay eggs. Both greens and gold lay eggs, although greens are terrible mothers, and usually forget the eggs, or don't tend them well, and tunnelsnakes will get them. Keep in mind that green clutches are few and far between. Firelizards tend to return to the Southern Continent to lay their clutches, so its unusual that a green firelizard's clutch will be found by its owner.

Gold clutches: 10 - 25 eggs, all colors, no more than one gold.
Green clutches: 5 - 10 eggs, blue and green only with the occasional brown.

Impression and the Bond
Impressing firelizards isn't like Impressing a dragon. There is no life-long bond, and firelizards are not programmed to self-destruct like dragons upon their owner's death. They simply return to the wild. They may decide to hang around, if their owner had a family, but they won't re-Impress. The firelizard can choose to leave their owner if they are neglected or abused.

Firelizard Impress to whatever feeds them. In the wild, they Impress to each other. This is another reason why so many green firelizards aren't successful. Baby firelizards that aren't provided with an offering of meat will turn on their clutchmates for food. Yes, they WILL cannibalize their clutchmates. Its important to have fresh meat on hand when one wishes to Impress a firelizard. Participants in a firelizard hatching usually hold out food and think loving thoughts in an attempt to attract the little ones. There is no gender preference. Golds can Impress to men, and bronzes can Impress to women.

When a green or gold firelizard rises to mate, and is chased by bronzes, browns, or blues, the owner of the firelizards aren't overcome in the same manner as dragonriders. They will notice, but it is possible to ignore it. The owner may feel more inclined to participate in sexual activity, but it is by no means required. It can enhance intercourse, but it is nothing like the gestalt that occurs during dragon mating flights. The owners of the firelizards which mate are most certainly NOT required to mate with each other. They can if they want to, but there is nothing that forces them to. Gold firelizards will first rise to mate at approximately six months of age, while greens may rise anywhere from two to four months of age.