The biodiversity of dragons' teeth

Studying the biodiversity of dragon's teeth might sound like a niche activity reserved for role-play gamers but welcome to a site of science and history.

Anti-tank barriers, known as dragon’s teeth, were a key part of the Nazi Germany’s Westwall (often called the Siegfried Line) and ran parallel to France’s Maginot Line.

But despite the toil of hundreds of thousands of labours, it proved to be just as useless. While the Germans went around the Maginot line in 1940, the Allied armies’ solution four years later was to go over the top by just piling earth over them with bulldozers.

Now these teeth provide a unique habitat and are home to diverse flora and fauna.

They are even being traversed by a different type of mobile armoured unit.

The rare narrow-mouthed whorl snail

How to get there

There are multiple locations but one set can be visited by cycling along the Vennbahn from Aachen.

Take the Eurostar to Brussels, then change trains to Aachen.

You can hire a bike from Radstation for around 5 Euros per day