Re: origin of bats/reply 2 to TMK

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

>  In addition, I am not all that sure that feather length is correlated to 
> the size of quill knobs. Can you cite something to the effect of a 
> correlation?

No. I'm saying I expect there to be a weak correlation, composed of a 
correlation between presence of quill knobs and forces on the wing feathers, 
and another between those forces and the length of the wing feathers. It may 
well be that other factors than the length have a much larger impact on the 
forces -- well, obviously, a powered flier will almost inevitably experience 
much greater forces on its wing feathers than a flightless animal with 
equally long wing feathers will...