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Makes you wonder if - given enough time - they (or perhaps a larger bird) could evolve the ability to maintain a completely airborne life-cycle.
by polemic 10y ago
Makes you wonder if - given enough time - they (or perhaps a larger bird) could evolve the ability to maintain a completely airborne life-cycle.
- oh_sigh 10y agoYou realize that birds lay eggs right?
- andrewflnr 10y agoOh come on, use your imagination. The feet evolve for carrying eggs. They re-develop live birth. The young learn to hang on from the first moment. They fly earlier. That's just the ideas from 20 seconds of thought.
- oh_sigh 10y agoSorry, I guess I was thinking realistically how this could happen.
- joesb 10y agoIf you don't know dolphin exists, it's not that reallistic how it could happen either.
- oh_sigh 10y agoI do know dolphins exist.
- Karellen 10y agoYou realise that Emperor Penguins pretty much do this already? When the egg is hatched, it cannot touch the ground or it will instantly freeze and the chick will die. So the female lays the egg onto her feet, where she holds it until she transfers it over to her partner, who will hold it on his feet for the weeks it takes the female to walk back to the ocean and replenish her energy reserves. When the chick hatches, it will spend the first few days (weeks?) of its life on its parents' feet, still never touching the ground, before it is old enough to venture out itself. Evolution comes up with some pretty weird solutions to hard problems. :-)
- ASalazarMX 10y agoSo? They'd lay eggs with wings.
- gliese1337 10y agoSlight spoilers, but: https://www.amazon.com/Airborn-Kenneth-Oppel/dp/0060531827/ref=sr_1_1 https://www.amazon.com/Airborn-Kenneth-Oppel/dp/0060531827/r...
- Razengan 10y agoSo, basically fish, in a thinner medium? There must be perpetually airborne macroscopic lifeforms flying/floating through the upper layers of some gas giant somewhere..
- mherrmann 10y agoMy layman theory for why it hasn't happened yet is that evolutionary pressure is not high enough. I believe the main advantage of not having to breed on land would be safety from predators. I guess there is no shortage of "safe" places.
- throwanem 10y agoIslands nobody's ever heard of, where they can build nests safe from predators that don't exist there.