Flying is one of the ways animals have to move , but not everyone can do it.To fly it is necessary to have physical characteristics that allow the flight.The human being, through the observation of aerial animals, has taken centuries to create a machine that flies, for example, as a bird.
Only a few groups of animals have the real ability to fly, although if we see it from the perspective of the species, most of the animal species that exist on the planet fly, insects.In this article of Animal Expert we will know which are the aerial animals , their characteristics and some examples.
What are air animals?
Air animals are those that use flight as a mechanism of locomotion.For some animals this is their only way of moving but many others use it as an escape route in the presence of a predator.
Certain animals spend the majority of their lives flying, performing all their vital functions in the air: eating, interacting with their environment and living or reproducing.For them, flying is essential to live.Other animals only acquire the ability to fly when they reach adulthood.Some species are able to travel long distances flying, such as migratory animals , others only need to fly small stretches.
Each animal species or group of animals It has a different mechanics to get around using the flight, therefore they will have different but similar characteristics , since the latter is the same: fly.
What characteristics do air animals have?
Each flying animal species has its own way of flying according to its physical characteristics, but most of these animals must have a series of common attributes that allow flight:
- Wings: all flying animals have wings.In some cases, these wings are modifications of the previous members of the body, such as in birds or flying mammals (bats).Where the bones have been modified throughout the evolution providing the capacity or improving it.Other animals have developed wings by what is known as evolutionary convergence , that is, by similar environmental pressures.This is the case of insects.
- Low weight: so that an animal can fly you cannot be very heavy.Birds have reduced the weight of their bones by increasing the porosity of these, making them lighter.Flying invertebrates weigh little, the material of which their exoskeleton is constituted is very light.Those animals fly Doors who have a greater weight cannot fly long distances because they cannot stay long in flight.
- Cardiac capacity: both the muscles in charge of the flight and the heart muscle itself are highly developed in flying animals.The flight spends a lot of energy and a greater amount of oxygen must reach the muscles.For this to happen, the heart rate is very high and the blood hemoglobin levels (protein that carries oxygen in the blood) too.
- Aerodynamic form: the body shape is also important.Reducing the resistance exerted by the body against the air serves to be more efficient in flight.Having a less aerodynamic form does not imply not being able to fly, but slowing it down.
Types of aerial animals
There are different types of aerial animals according to the edge to which they belong, so we have aerial mammals that are chiroptera or bats.We cannot consider other mammals such as the flying squirrel as an aerial animal because it really does not fly, just plan.The really flying mammals are the bats.
On the other hand there are the birds, but not all of them are aerial animals, there are several species that due to their weight or absence of wings can not fly.Some of the birds that do not fly are the kiwis, the ostriches or the already extinct dodos.
Within the group of invertebrates , only animals belonging to the Insecta Class have wings and can fly.In these animals the wings only appear and are functional in adulthood.Some insects do not have wings when they are adults but it is due to an evolutionary adaptation called neotenia or maintenance of juvenile characters.
Examples of aerial animals
As we have said, the vast majority of birds are aerial animals.A very clear example are the swifts.These animals, after leaving the nest, spend their entire lives in the air.They feed by opening the beak and hunting mosquitoes, courting their partners while flying, they can even copulate in the air.
Other examples of aerial animals are:
- Psittacidae or parrots are also aerial animals to despite being exemplary climbers, many psitacidae migrate and for this, they must have a good flight capacity.
- The hammerhead frugivoro bat, the largest species of African bat, like the rest of chiroptera, It is an aerial animal.Nightly, you spend the hours of the day sleeping and it feeds on fruits, but also on domestic birds or carroneras.
- The monarch butterfly is a good example of an aerial animal belonging to the group of insects , because in their life cycle they perform some of the longest migrations on the planet.
If you want to read more articles similar to Aerial animals-Examples and characteristics , we recommend that you enter our Curiosities section of the animal world.
Bibliography
- Bale, R., Hao, M., Bhalla, APS,&Patankar , NA (2014).Energy efficiency and allometry of movement of swimming and flying animals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (21), 7517-7521.
- Bishop, CM (1997).Heart mass and the maximum cardiac output of birds and mammals: implications for estimating the maximum aerobic power input of flying animals.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.Series B: Biological Sciences, 352 (1352), 447-456.
- Weis-Fogh, T.(1975).Unusual mechanisms for the generation of lift in flying animals.Scientific American, 233 (5), 80-87.
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