• Question: Through evolution and our habitat could we ever grow wings?

    Asked by gorillaguy22 to Pete, Rebecca, SallyB, Sally, Sian on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sally Barber

      Sally Barber answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      No i don’t think so… also we’d have to adapt our whole physiology to be able to fly… We’d have to lose a lot of weight (the heaviest bird is only 10kg, humans are more like 50-90kg), we would have to change our circulatory system so that more oxygen and nutrients went to our wings, this would mean that less blood would go to our brains so we wouldn’t be able to sustain our brain development. I’m sure there are loads of other adaptions we’d have to make. I don’t think it’s risk losing our brain function for. Although imagine how amazing it would be if we could be!

    • Photo: Sally Fenton

      Sally Fenton answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I don’t think so…for this to happen I think someone would have to be born with wings… which would mean someone reproducing with a bird of some sort…which I don’t think would happen! Maybe it could be done in the future though by gentic engineering. It would be amazing to be able to fly!

    • Photo: Sian Lawson

      Sian Lawson answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      For natural selection to work, people who were moving in the wing direction (had wing stubs, skin flaps or semi-functional wings) would need to breed more than those without any wing traits. You mentioned habitat – that could cause people with certain characteristics to be more sucessful, and possibly even living longer, but would that lead to them passing on their genes more? I can see complete wings as maybe an attractive state, but I’m not sure that I’d be impressed by a “skin flap” evolutionary stage.

      Of course wings are only one part of the equation of actually flying…

    • Photo: Peter Styring

      Peter Styring answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I don’t think so. there would need to be considerable changes to our anatomy and physiology. However, our evolution has meant that we have been able to engineer ways to fly, but not unaided!

    • Photo: Rebecca Randell

      Rebecca Randell answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Perhaps not. We would need so pretty strong wings for us to be able to fly. Also we have no need to fly as we get from place to place by car, train, bus. I would love to have wings though i would fly to sunny countries all the time

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