3 ms·

> It does beg the question, tho, why we haven’t seen any truly giant bats. They're mammals, birds have different respiratory system "Flow-Through Ventilation

• keyle 2y ago
  Nature optimizes. The bigger you get, the more you need to eat. The harder it gets to fly. Fruit bats eat fruits. Look at the food source and you'll understand the evolution.
  • vanderZwan 2y ago
    > Fruit bats eat fruits. The most caloric dense source of nutrition available in nature? I don't see why that is a limitation to body size for a flying animal - quite the opposite!
    • TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Plants aren't particularly calorie-dense. Meat, on the other hand...
      • the__alchemist 2y ago
        Look at great apes. Large land mammals in general. (Apes came to mind specifically because they usually eat fruit)
      • vanderZwan 2y ago
        Are you aware you switched "fruit" for "plant" there?
      • Jerrrry 2y ago
        Fruits want to be eaten, Veggies don't.
      • mdarens 2y ago
        this is almost in "not even wrong" territory, but for the fact that autotrophs are definitionally the entry point for abiotic energy into edible calories for animals, and the observation that the largest terrestrial megafauna are herbivorous. bamboo is not calorie dense to humans, because we've lost the ability to digest most of it, but pecans are absolutely more calorie dense than even fatty beef. all else being equal, an ideal carbohydrate source is more calorically dense than an equivalent ideal lean protein source due to the balance in the thermic effect of food between the two. most mammals outside the obligate carnivores are really well optimized for getting calories from plants— this is why we have amylase in our saliva.
    • fsckboy 2y ago
      fruit bats are the biggest bats not GP but I think that was the point. also, volume grows as the cube of linear dimensions which also puts an upper limit on size, as wing surface area only grows as the square (not sure what/how lift grows relative to)
• vanderZwan 2y ago
  That's why mammals can't breathe at high altitudes that birds can, but I'm not sure if that affects the body plan much in terms of size. The largest birds are smaller than the largest mammals on land or at sea. Then again, lower oxygen levels compared to the past seems to be a limitation for insect sizes too (who have an even less efficient respiratory system). I also don't think it's the warmbloodedness. There are giant mammals in general after all. Perhaps it is because bats form large, dense colonies? There is only so many resources available in any given ecological niche, so then for any species that fills a niche one would expect those resources to be divided either among many small individuals or a few large ones. Bat evolution chose the "big colony" route, which I assume favors smaller individuals.
  • aziaziazi 2y ago
    > The largest birds are smaller than the largest mammals on land or at sea With all my respect to you theory I think comparing size of animals should not ignore the medium they moved in: water, land or air. Weight is (loosely but still) related to size. It’s probably not a coincidence the largest mammals lives on water where they need less energy to supper their weight, and it’s not a coïncidents the largest mammals on earth are way bigger that bats. The biggest bats are ~1.7m which is not so far from biggest albatros (3.7m). Also consider the biggest bird (Ostriches) can’t fly. Now I’m trying to picture a swimming gigantic bird.
    • totallykvothe 2y ago
      An Emperor Penguin?
      • aziaziazi 2y ago
        Right! To complete the unusual list : flying fish and... Amphibious fish! Wikipedia says there's 11 of them. Ok stop procrastinating now.
    • vanderZwan 2y ago
      Well, fair. But birds are warmblooded too so that doesn't change much there, and on top of that the difference in requiring bigger lungs for the same amount of oxygen extraction would exactly add much weight per volume, so to speak