Evolution of Flight

I was watching a show tonight, called Evolution on the History Channel. It's a good show!! I watch it every Tuesday night. This show has opened my eyes further to the world of evolution. It talks about the evolution of everything. Tonight, they discussed the evolution of flight. We all know the insects were the first creatures to take to the air. The pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to do so. But the reason I am discussing this here now is because of the difference between birds and bats.

Even this show says that bats fly better than birds and are more maneuverable than birds. It could be this that allows bats to win in the future world over birds. Remember sharks beat out the prehistoric Dunkleosteus. You know why some people believed that happened? Because sharks have jaws that protrude foreward when biting, giving them a bigger advantage in capturing prey over Dunkleosteus, whose jaws were immobile like ours. Little things sometimes can make the biggest difference. Sharks have been successful for over 350 million years because of that! Whereas Dunkleosteus and it's allies died off long ago. If bats are more agile fliers than birds, even slightly more, that could be a huge advantage in their future survival over birds. All bats have to know how to do now is take over the daytime skies, and it is the pteropods that are well on the way to doing just that.

On my Metazoic site, I have also a group of far-gliding mammals (or I will have when I get around to them) I call them "Pleuropters", and these mammals take on a method of gliding much like today's flying lizards of Borneo. It's an interesting concept. One that could happen in mammals. Who knows? But these are not the same things as bats. I've been thinking of not calling these mammals of my site "mammals", but something else. Maybe "Neomammals" for now, because IMO, they would be so very different from modern mammals. In birds and pterosaurs, the thing that makes them successful fliers is the hollow bones. In my Metazoic world, bats develop the same feature, making them lighter in weight and the largest bats just as capable of flying as smaller bats. But the air sacs are a feature no mammal has today. I also have placed this feature in the Lily-walkers and the small, water lily-trotting deinognathid, Feresetta. To make it easier for these animals to walk on lily pads without going through and sinking the pads to the bottom of their lake home. Much like we see in today's jacanas. But it was the air sacs and hollow bones that made the largest pterosaur, Quetzalcoaltus, capable of flight.