Future Chiropters

This is an on-going discussion on the Spec. Evolution forum and I just wanted to give a little bit of my own hypothesis on this subject. In my view, bats will take over from birds. Today, it is the pteropods that are the most intelligent forms, so it is my opinion that they will most likely be the ones to "muscle-out" birds in the competition. Birds are not going to be an easy group to defeat. There are some things that could wipe out birds and leave that niche open to bats. Nobody really knows what wiped out 99% of all living things at the end of the Permian period. It is thought that increased volcanic activity is among the culprits. It could happen again. The same thing could happen to wipe out birds. Let's say bats survive because they live in caves. Only 3 families of birds inhabit caves, whereas almost all bats shelter in caves. So IMHO, bats would survive. This is of course one of those "it could happen this way" kind of scenarios. Bats are among the most successful animals of all. The only thing they would need is to learn how to walk around on their hind legs. In the Metazoic, I figure pteropods (also known as Megachiropters) will fill in these niches.

At the end of the Permian Period, there were but a few survivers. Among these were dinosaurs and synapsids. Among the synapsids was a pig-sized Lystrosaurus that survived, and became the prototype for all mammals today. If a large animal like that could survive an extinction event that killed off 99% of all other creatures, then there is no reason some other rather good-sized creatures couldn't survive again, and I'm thinking bats could be among the species to survive, and even take over. Birds are small, and can live on limited amounts of food, but then again, so can bats. Bats can gradually grow to larger proportions. In the Metazoic, there are even flightless bats. These bats, I call them the Cryptochiropters, are more monkey-like and live in what is today Hawaii. They have lost the use of their last 3 digits and the thumb and index fingers have become their forefeet, same arrangement on their hind feet, and they use these for walking, not flying. This family evolved off the pteropods, but went down a different evolutionary route. Most of these animals are tree-dwellers, but there are some ground-dwellers as well that graze on grasses, and watch out overhead for the vicious Cercomoloch. Cercomoloch I figure will be a giant, predatory pteropod that feeds on other animals, killing them with their talons, like in modern eagles.

Well, who knows what can happen, birds are adaptable, but then so are bats. Dunkleosteus was a great survivor in the age of fish. But they were unexpectedly muscled out by sharks. One would have thought sharks, whose internal body structure is made up of cartilage, would have died off hundreds of millions of years ago. But they survived and beat out Dunkleosteus!! Sometimes evolution and nature take unexpected paths.