Evolution, do you think that a Flying Squirrel will one day actually fly?

I'm not really into Evolution because I could care less, but I heard that Fish evolved from a unicellular germ or something, and the fish grew legs and came on land and became an amphibian, then the amphibian had webbed feet and hands and flew... my question is, do you think Flying Squirrel's will evolve one day to learn how to fly like that amphibious fish did? I understand if you think of me as ignorant for not knowing Evolution, but I haven't really had any interest in it until now. Please answer my question politely...Evolution, do you think that a Flying Squirrel will one day actually fly?
There's no way to know for sure. Neat question, though. It does depend on whether flying more gives it an advantage, but it also depends on how easily flying can be acquired.





I heard an interesting note on flying squirrels once, but unfortunately I can't remember the reference because it was years ago, but I think it might have actually been in an article about bats. The main point of the article was that it is thought that two different lineages of bats evolved convergently from different land mammals. Since their flight evolved from membranes around their hands, they both ended up looking similar, and they both ended up being very good fliers because the hands have lots of muscles and bones that can be adjusted into great wings. Birds are similar too in that their feathers basically turned one of their front legs into a wing, and that front leg has a lot of bones and muscles with potential for flight adaptation.





The flying squirrels, on the other hand, have developed a membrane between their arms and legs, and it is a lot more difficult to turn that area into a functional wing because there are no bones or anything spanning that area. So the argument was that the flying squirrel might be a sort of evolutionary dead end in the flying catagory. Another piece to back up that argument is that there is a marsupial called the sugar glider that is very similar to the flying squirrel, but completely unrelated, which indicates that it also developed an arm-to-leg membrane that gives great gliding capability, but it was also not able to develop it into a flying wing.





Given millions of years, however, there's just no way to know. It might also be possible that something we cannot imagine might evolve out of those gliding membranes--for example maybe they will start using them to capture prey and they will eventually evolve to be bigger and bigger prey capturing membranes until they are man-eating-membrane-digesting monsters that live in trees and land on people and devour them with their poisonous membrane sacks. I'm having fun here, of course, but trying to make the point that a lot of future scenarios are possible. Evolution does not look forward and say ';gee, I'd like to have a wing, I think I'll develop one like those birds over there.';





Edit: Oh yeah, and be careful asking evolution questions in this forum because you will get crashed with a bunch of links to christian bible sites. You can also debate whether gravity exists or if it's just God pushing you down on earth until your body dies, but that discussion should be in the religion forums, not the science ones. It's your choice whether you want to base your beliefs on religious dogma or on science, but since you asked the question in a science forum, I tried to give you a science answer. I don't crash other forums.Evolution, do you think that a Flying Squirrel will one day actually fly?
If it were advantageous to their survival, possibly. What would happen is the squirrels that were better at gliding would continue to survive and pass on their genes and those that weren't so hot at it would die, essentially filtering out the population and each generation they would get better and better and better at it and on and on and on until it devoloped into full-blown flying. It would take a long time and many, many generations to reach that point but it is possible.
Unlikely. Thy are too specialized for gliding. Flying animals (bats, birds, insects) all evolved from relatively unspecialized ancestors. They had to develop a lot more than gliding flaps (some snakes, lizards, and frogs have done the same thing independently.); they also need huge chest muscles and a keeled sternum to attach the muscle to.
';...do you think that a Flying Squirrel will one day actually fly?';





Not a chance! :-)





Consider a few facts for starters:





-- The law of biogenesis: we see creatures giving rise to their own kinds only.





-- We never see any creatures evolving into a more complex, different kind of creature. Evolution of this sort has never once been observed.





Variation within kinds which we do observe in finches, moths, etc. is not the same as amoeba-to-man evolution, and this variation within kinds has never once been seen to lead to one type of creature evolving into another. The finches remain finches and the moths remain moths. Always.





Science deals with what you can see, observe, record, test, repeat, etc.





Since it has never been seen, amoeba-to-man evolution can not be demonstrated or supported with the scientific method. The current atomic theory can; the theory of gravity can; but evolution can鈥檛. How many experiments have been done that give convincing evidence of even one transition within amoeba-to-man evolution? None.





Amoeba-to-man evolution has never been seen, repeated, recorded, etc., so it is neither a scientific theory nor even a scientific idea. It's a conjecture, an unsupported leap of faith, and worse: a lie, since God already said how He made things.





I hope these links will be of interest and helpful:





http://www.allaboutcreation.org/evidence鈥?/a>





http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles鈥?/a>





http://www.icr.org/





http://www.answersingenesis.org/





http://creation.com/is-evolution-pseudos鈥?/a>





http://creation.com/clouded-minds





http://creation.com/antidote-to-supersti鈥?/a>





http://creation.com/the-scientific-fact-鈥?/a>





http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles鈥?/a>








I think Mark Twain's quote below applies to the idea of evolution:





There is something fascinating about science.


One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture


out of such a trifling investment of fact.





Mark Twain.


Life on the Mississippi