Why a bat is the only flying mammal? - (Dec/04/2007 )
I believe I have worked with that radiation... I now have superpowers that enable me to look down microscopes for hours on end and split cell cultures in record time, not quite the powers I was hoping for, but close.
The adventures of Tissue-Culture Man. See him adjust the lenses of a seeming unfocusable microscope!! Watch in awe as he saves cells from over-confluency!!!
I can forsee a cult comic, followed by a movie deal.
Anyway, back to the topic, the bat's wings are actually shaped very similar to to the human hand.
V
looks like you already have super human optimism (comics show scientists becoming acceptable to the public only when mutated - the rest of us are just tolerated)
dom
bat's wings are equivalent to the hand, the skin is stretched between the digit equivalents.
There's also an Aussie scientist who reckons that the flying foxes and the microbats are examples of convergent evolution. According to his theory, the flying foxes are evolved from the colugo, a gliding mammal related to lemurs, rather than evolving from the microbat family. Opponents point out that this system would mean wings evolved twice, and say this is so unlikely that he must have made a mistake.
I don't know: do these people believe in Darwinian evolution or not? If it's possible the ability evolved by chance once, why should it not have evolved by chance twice? If the mutations could occur to the advantage of one group, why could they not have occurred in another group too?
?Batman does not fly. He drives. It was superman. For that one needs to wear the men's unmentionables over the trousers.
After going through the answers one-by-one and revising the list of animals that can fly, I can summarise by saying that beside birds and insects and some molluscs, it is only bats that can fly. Others that could are already extinct.
So, re-phrasing the question again: why only bats had to fly but not others?
Wiki says bats make up around 20% of the mammals. They are in such huge number; so they are well-adapted.