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A flying animal for humans to fly on?
Topic Started: Aug 6 2010, 03:57 PM (2,726 Views)
Dean
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Do you think an animal that humans can use to fly on could have evolved?

If so, what kind of animal would be the most suitable for this purpose and what divergence would a world containing this animal would need to take from ours, in order for this animal to evolve?


If humans began flying on this animal about the same time humans in our world started riding horses, how would this affected human history?


Obviously, this animal would need to be strong enough to achieve powered flight with an average adult human riding it, tame enough in it's undomesticated state that humans would even try riding one, and it would need to be at least as smart as a horse, or at least as smart as to co-operate with the human who rides it.

What are your ideas?
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Kamidio
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Weaker than ptreosaurs.
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Spugpow
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Well, nobody can ever agree on anything about Pterosaur flight, so I think the point is moot.
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Kamidio
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I bet that JohnFaa is probably behind you with a knife right now. He doesn't like it when people doubt the might of these flying beasts.
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Pando
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Spugpow
Oct 7 2010, 10:08 PM
Sorry Pandorasaurus, but birds definitely do NOT have weak flight systems, and are certainly better adapted to flight than bats.
Dayshade PMed me about it, here's my reply:
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#1: Their wings do not stretch to the legs and then from leg to leg, giving less wing space.
#2: In flight their legs are dead weights, but in pterosaurs and bats the legs help the flight with the wings.
#3: Due to its small wings, it needs to flap faster, making it use more energy.
#4: Due to its small wings, it can't grow as big as a pterosaur as the wings won't sustain it.

The only thing they're better at is short range maneuverability.

Now say that they have a weak flight system. It's not complete crap, but it is weak compared to pterosaurs and to a lesser extent bats.
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Spugpow
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Bats have thick bones, inefficient mammalian lungs, weak flapping muscles, and fragile, tearable wings. Also, their legs just flop around in flight, they don't actually provide any flapping force.

Birds have numerous adaptations to reduce weight, such as hollow bones, beaks, compact skeletons, and wings made out of thin keratin fibers, rather than skin and bone. The wings are made up of overlapping feathers that allow the their surfaces to easily change shape without rumpling, unlike the skin wings of bats. Finally, birds have one of the most efficient respiratory systems among vertebrates, allowing them to flap harder and faster than a bat for the same amount of oxygen.

Basically, birds are better fliers because they have been doing it a lot longer than bats, which evolved relatively recently. As for pterosaurs, I suspect they were just as good if not better at flying than birds because of the length of time they had to perfect their flight, though that still didn't save them from the mass extinction that birds survived.
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Carlos
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Quote:
 
Bats have thick bones, inefficient mammalian lungs, weak flapping muscles, and fragile, tearable wings. Also, their legs just flop around in flight, they don't actually provide any flapping force.


1- Bat flight muscles are just as powerful as avian ones. They just are attached in a different way; while birds have both the muscles that pull the wing up and down attached to the sternum, bats (as well as pterosaurs, and human beings) have the muscles that pull the wing up attached to the back; this means that they don't require that big a sternum.

2- While bat wings are considerably more fragile than avian wings, they compensate by having ridiculously fast tissue regeneration rates. In addition, bat wings, being made of living tissue, have a complex nervous tissue on the membranes, and thus allow a much more efficient wing control and air sensivity. So efficient bats are with their wings that they can fly with them in an asymmetrical position, while birds need to fly with the wings in a symmetrical position.

3- Bat hindlimbs are lighter than bird hindlimbs, as they don't rely on them solely for locomotion and don't use them to take off, and having an uropatagium they act in the same way as a bird's tail feathers. Birds, on the other hand, have very robust and heavy hindlimbs, which do no aerodynamic job and thus are dead weight.
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T.Neo
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Anyway, if we can breed a vicious wolf into a tiny Chihuahua after only few centuries, I don't see why I our ancestors couldn't have bred condors or some other large species or bird into a stronger and sturdier species for flight of we really wanted to.


A condor isn't a wolf, and a riding bird isn't a chihuahua.
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Kamidio
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JohnFaa
Oct 8 2010, 05:22 PM
1- Bat flight muscles are just as powerful as avian ones. They just are attached in a different way; while birds have both the muscles that pull the wing up and down attached to the sternum, bats (as well as pterosaurs, and human beings) have the muscles that pull the wing up attached to the back; this means that they don't require that big a sternum.
We have wings?
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Yorick
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Quote:
 
A condor isn't a wolf, and a riding bird isn't a chihuahua.


I think you missed the point I was trying to make.
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

Par for the course 'round here. ;)
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food for thought
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colddigger
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Oct 8 2010, 08:06 PM
JohnFaa
Oct 8 2010, 05:22 PM
1- Bat flight muscles are just as powerful as avian ones. They just are attached in a different way; while birds have both the muscles that pull the wing up and down attached to the sternum, bats (as well as pterosaurs, and human beings) have the muscles that pull the wing up attached to the back; this means that they don't require that big a sternum.
We have wings?
You mean you don't?????
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Even
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SIiver Slave
Oct 9 2010, 12:52 AM
Croc of Diamonds
Oct 8 2010, 08:06 PM
JohnFaa
Oct 8 2010, 05:22 PM
1- Bat flight muscles are just as powerful as avian ones. They just are attached in a different way; while birds have both the muscles that pull the wing up and down attached to the sternum, bats (as well as pterosaurs, and human beings) have the muscles that pull the wing up attached to the back; this means that they don't require that big a sternum.
We have wings?
You mean you don't?????
It's that our hand structure and pterosaur's wing structure is the same
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Carlos
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Exactly. Well, not the hand structure, but arm muscle attachment. After all, what is a wing but a modified arm?
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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lamna
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I think you missed his point too Yorick. Just because we've breed dogs into all kinds of strange forms does not mean that any kind of selective breeding is possible with any animal.
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Carlos
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Indeed; it is relatively hard to train birds. They lack social hierarchy, something that makes training horses and dogs very easy. Bird trainers have to make the bird do something while being at the bird's social level, which is something very hard to do.
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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