Perhaps this symbiotic grouping evolved when a 'body' ancestor took to hanging on to one or two 'rotor' ancestors in such a way that when the group fell, the rotors would rotate, providing increased drag and retarding a fall, allowing safe falls from a greater, potentially unlimited, height.īy evolving the means to power the rotation of the rotor symbiotes, the loss of altitude could be further slowed and eventually negated and then reversed. However, the organisms' ancestors must have been viable in a less-evolved state. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility for this 'organism' to actually be two or more organisms, a 'body' and two (perhaps different) 'wings', that combine to form a single rotary-winged unit. It is far more likely that an organism will evolve a particular capability using means that require fewer steps and pre-conditions, and it is generally not possible to evolve a capability if a reduction in fitness is a pre-requisite. If a non-living part of an organism is to rotate, a mechanism for its construction must exist, and the integrity of this separated-but-retained dead body part may become a limiting factor for the survival of the organism, or else a means of replacement must exist.
If a living part of an organism is to rotate, it must either be so small that it obtains its nutrients directly from its environment, or the means by which metabolic requirements and communication are fulfilled must first be evolved. Simply put, this is highly unlikely to evolve in a single organism:Īny evolved structure must be useful as a less-evolved structure at any point in the organism's evolutionary history, or it must be able to be evolved with a single mutation. Initial spin would probably come from using some sort of slow load but fast release spring mechanism in contact with solid surface. Would need good eyes and decent brain, though. And mention of dragonflies suggests a predator that evolves the ability to attack flying insects and even small birds by spinning up to air and dragging them down to water. Your specified size is actually a good match for this. Maybe an ambush predator that is small enough that it needs a good escape plan? Now give it ability to spin up to air and you have a flying rotor. This would imply either an ambush predator or something that needs to escape ambush predators. That said the drag would be fairly high, so it would be fast and agile in bursts. It should be fairly fast and agile as it can push lots of water for its size and with high degree of control. This will create an aquatic creature that is essentially a living propeller. Optimize it for spinning by flattening the limbs into wing profiles and improving ability to keep spinning. Spin might make sense if attacked by a moderately larger predator as it makes you harder to hit with those jaws and all those sharp teeth. Rotating parts are a pain in so many ways. Take an animal with radial symmetry, which is what rotors have. I'm not looking for perfect scientific accuracy, but rather general plausibility. Further down the line, the adult stage became more land based and required the agile motion it had in the water. As the creature evolved, it used that motion to make short hops out of the water in order to catch prey. Everything I've come up with is very mechanical and doesn't seem to translate well to biology.Īs for evolution, I think it could make sense if shortened rotors first evolved as part of the creature's aquatic ancestors, enabling faster movement in the water. But I'm still stuck on how a creature could have rotors. I suppose there could be some mechanism similar to a crankshaft to convert translational motion to rotational. How would the rotors work? I'm not aware of any creatures that have a rotating appendage (besides something like swinging your arms in a circle).
Would such a creature actually be able to fly? I don't see any reason why it couldn't as we have machines that fly with the same mechanics, but I may not be considering something. I'm thinking a twin rotor design would be best due to the bilateral symmetry, but I'm open to anything. However, I would like it to fly with rotating "wings" in a similar fashion to a helicopter. I'm designing a creature similar in size and behavior to a large dragonfly.
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