What was the earliest flying animal?

[dichotomy]

What was the earliest flying animal (inc. insects)?

I don’t mean one like a microbe that is blown around by the wind, but one that had at least gliding control.

[CDarwin]

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/nature/q0201.shtml

 

Apparently the Protodonata. The earliest winged insects known appear to have been full flyers, so these almost certainly weren't the real "first" to have gliding control. Basically nobody knows.

[dichotomy]

Thanks for the link Darwin.

 

It's surprising that a two winged insect fossil has not been found that predates Protodonata.

 

Cheers.

[YT2095]

after reading that link, I wonder if bats may have evolved from what we see today as these "Flying" Squirrels?

[iNow]

after reading that link, I wonder if bats may have evolved from what we see today as these "Flying" Squirrels?

 

Interesting thought. If I were to guess, though, that's probably better described as an example of convergent evolution (or, potentially evolutionary relay). This is just a guess, however.

[CDarwin]

after reading that link, I wonder if bats may have evolved from what we see today as these "Flying" Squirrels?

 

There are also "flying lemurs" (which don't fly and aren't lemurs) and sugar gliders that use the same mode of locomotion, and its hypothesized that the Pleisiadapiforms, ancient proto-primates, had the same form of locomotion.

 

Now, bats, Pleisiadapiforms, and flying lemurs are all members of the Super-Order Archonta, so you could definately be onto something. The common ancestor of all the Archonta could have been something like a primitive glider which then eleborated into different sorts of gliders in the Pleisiadapiforms and flying lemurs and full-out flight in the bats.

[YT2095]

Hmm... now I would have put Money on the fact that they are Rodentia!?

[CDarwin]

Hmm... now I would have put Money on the fact that they are Rodentia!?

 

Bats are in their own Order, the Chiroptera. Rodents are in the Super-Order Glires, which also includes rabbits, and is sometimes included with the Archontans in, if memory serves, a Subclass called the Superglires. Ain't mammalian macrotaxonomy fun?

[Sisyphus]

after reading that link, I wonder if bats may have evolved from what we see today as these "Flying" Squirrels?

 

More accurately, something like flying squirrels, i.e. gliding seems like the most likely precursor to flight, whether your talking about mammals, birds, insects, whatever.

[CDarwin]

More accurately, something like flying squirrels, i.e. gliding seems like the most likely precursor to flight, whether your talking about mammals, birds, insects, whatever.

 

More accurately something like a flying lemur.

[dichotomy]

gliding seems like the most likely precursor to flight, whether your talking about mammals, birds, insects, whatever.

 

You would assume so.

 

I'd also assume that flight 'architecture' would have started in the sea. By simply observing creatures like manta rays gliding through water, and of course those amazing flying fish.

 

More accurately something like a flying lemur.

 

The first time I have heard about flying lemurs. And just a step off a flying monkey, damn.

 

Lemurs do have that flying fox appearance about them.

 

[CDarwin]

Lemurs do have that flying fox appearance about them.

 

Different researchers have pointed that out. It goes beyond superficial appearance too. Old World fruit bats have eyes more like the primate eye than any other animal, as well as similar brain pathways associated with vision.

 

http://www.batcon.org/batsmag/v3n2-1.html

 

That work is a little old, and it has since been pretty well demonstrated that the Old and New World bats share a common ancestor quite distinct from the primates, but the convergence is still quite remarkable. Various primatologists have pointed to fruit bats in trying to make models for the evolution of the fairly unique primate sensory hardware.

 

Of course, as I said, flying lemurs (they're also called Colugos, but I don't think that name is as much fun) aren't actually lemurs. They're in a separate order, the Dermoptera.