system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5: Why does every civilization, ancient and newer, have legends of dragons?

They even look similar in most if not all cases.. why is that?
gpt
Because they didn't. *But* most every civilization encountered mammals and lizards and spiders and etc etc etc. and they made legends that reflected things from their world. And when Europeans found a legend that talked about a big lizard or slightly lizard like thing, they said "oh that's a dragon!" Even when the similarities were meager at best. The same as big hairy men legends and spider entities and bird monsters that are popular.

Tldr not everyone had legends about dragons, but lots of people have legends about lizard things, because they all saw lizards. And we just call them all dragons because we're lazy.