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by agumonkey 810 days ago
wings
3 comments

Wings are so fascinating. Flying animals have their whole body, from their brain, digestive system, down to their bones internal structure and function [0] optimized for flight. That's where we see species giving up flight ability to get a stronger body, and I wonder what it would take for us to do the reverse to be able to use these wings in any way.

[0] https://www.montananaturalist.org/blog-post/avian-adaptation...

We'd definitely have to give up long gestation and with that, live birth, and probably a good amount of cranial capacity due to weight and energy budget tradeoffs.
Huh? Bats have most of those those, more than most other mammals their size.
Bats do not have the cranial size of humans; that's kind of the point. They may have a loosely comparable cranium to body mass proportion, but allometric mass scaling matters with respect to physiological adaptation, quite a lot[0].

[0] https://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3221/spring10/HaldaneRig...

Just need to go to Titan

atmosphere thick enough, gravity low enough

It would be an awful trade. Weaker, dumber, slower. All for something that isn’t very good and we wouldn’t use very much.

People would prefer to drive rather than fly because you’ll get soaking wet. Unless you just go around naked or something.

Would make sitting down rather uncomfortable.
I'll buy new chairs.