RE: All this flying talk---then comes the why..or something

["Curtis B. Olson" <olson_c@mediasoft.net>]

On Sunday, April 12, 1998 9:03 PM, DinosOMP [SMTP:padron@online.no] wrote:
> Most people I talk to - "knows" why flight evolved.
> You ask, and they answer - "Its much easyer to escape danger that way"
>
> OK. Running is allso a effective way, AND flying ofcourse.
>
> But why, then, did the most dangerous animals (at their time) evolve to 
fly???
> What
> where they scared of?
>
> Why has those animals kept their siccle claw a long way up in the air? Take
> "Rahona" or
> "Linsterosaurus" ("Velociraptor jr/Saurornitholestes sp") for example. They
> are nice
> links to birds. They have allso kept a large siccle claw, just like
> Deinonychus. How
> about them _attacking_ from the air-gliding town from a hill or a tree, down
> to an
> unsuspecting prey.
>
> Maybe avian flight did not avolve to escape danger - but to be the one that
> makes it!

Or maybe it was not danger, but sex...

Extant "flying" frogs of the genus Rhacophorus glide from tree to tree. 
Escaping danger is just a one benefit of this adaptation.  It also allows 
mating animals to glide to each other's tree, and be there first.

As for the need to bring the claws down to ground level for lunch, surely there 
were other arboreal animals in the canopy?
--
Curtis Olson
Hamilton VA
olson_c@mediasoft.net

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