Follow your spirit, and, upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, Ding-a-Ling and Saint George!
Name:
Anonymous2012-09-09 6:22
Flying squirrels. Not dying from a goddamn fall. Escaping predators.
Name:
A Dumb2012-09-16 6:22
So you're saying therre was a bunch of creatures that lived on trees
And said creatures fell from those trees all the time
And one of them got a small mutation, a membrane between it's limbs
And it helped so much for falling, it quickly spread?
Or what?
Name:
Anonymous2012-09-16 23:34
Vertebrates that evolve the ability to glide are typically animals that need to jump from tree to tree with ease.
So we can clearly see a few short evolutionary steps towards flight.
A land dwelling animal evolves to climb trees.
It then evolves the ability to jump from branch to branch and then from tree to tree, to evade predators on the ground and reduce the amount of energy it needs to move around.
Characteristics associated with gliding are beneficial to this, the animal will first evolve to spread it's arms and legs wide open, then those animals with the widest lightest frames would be more successful. This could either be a membrane, or some other adaption like feathers.
It is then not much of an evolutionary leap to start flapping.
Name:
Anonymous2012-09-18 21:18
Evolution can be described as follows:
the ancient male tree-hopper, who we shall name bob, wants to find a mate. He has a problem though: Because they live high up in the treetops, many of the females die from falling. Only the ones with those wings survive falls. Seeing as dead females do not tend to produce babies, bob decides to mate with one (or more; cheating is common among animals) of the winged females. When she (or they) have babies, the babies have wings, just like their mother.