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Palarran
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If you're dealing with humans as known on Earth, the answer is a resounding no. That would be six limbs, whereas basically all animals (or at least anything more closely related to humans than, say, spiders) evolved from an aquatic ancestor with four limbs plus a tail. Evolution tends to work on a gradual basis: it's not about to conjure new limbs out of nowhere. A six-limbed human, at least on Earth, is flatly impossible without absurd mad-scientist-style experiments.

If you want to try merging arms (with hands) and wings together, it becomes slightly less impossible (but still is absurdity to imagine) if you're willing to look to other ways of flight beyond avians. Bats, for instance, have wings made up of their own skin (instead of growing feathers), which connects their arms to their bodies by much more than just the shoulder, giving a significant flying surface. Mind you, their arms are also incredibly long in relation to their body: if you wanted a human capable of even reasonably effective gliding (never mind powered flying) with such wings, each arm would probably be two metres long at minimum. Bat wings are also incredibly fragile, such that the equivalent of a paper cut would probably pierce them; they heal quickly from small tears, but this is likely to be problematic when scaled up to human proportions.

Still, this is at least something that developed in another mammal, so it's less ridiculous than sprouting two new limbs. Manipulation with such wings, however, is very unlikely; bat "fingers" are the spines in their wings (the thumb sticks out on its own, and as far as I know is basically a vestigial digit), their fingers being used to alter the wing shape. If you wanted to preserve hands in your winged humans, you would need to either sacrifice most of their performance in the air (likely ensuring that wings would never naturally evolve, since they would have no advantage to offset the problems that come with them: natural selection tends to get rid of counterproductive features by killing off those individuals) or accept that hands and wings do not mix in that way and instead rely on the feet to take the place of human hands (which, apart from their beaks, is how birds manipulate and grasp objects).

In short, nature is never going to produce what you're looking for; flight is very energy-intensive and requires considerable specialization. Usable hands at the ends of wings falls under "makes wings no longer useful for chief purpose of flying", and natural selection will typically kill off individuals with such counterproductive traits; wings that cannot be used to even glide effectively are worse than useless, being a huge target that slows an individual down on the ground. Turning feet into new hands while having wings is a more reasonable approach, but still an absurd proposition given Earth's evolutionary history.

If you're dealing with humans as known on Earth, the answer is a resounding no. That would be six limbs, whereas basically all animals (or at least anything more closely related to humans than, say, spiders) evolved from an aquatic ancestor with four limbs plus a tail. Evolution tends to work on a gradual basis: it's not about to conjure new limbs out of nowhere. A six-limbed human, at least on Earth, is flatly impossible without absurd mad-scientist-style experiments.

If you want to try merging arms (with hands) and wings together, it becomes slightly less impossible (but still is absurdity to imagine) if you're willing to look to other ways of flight beyond avians. Bats, for instance, have wings made up of their own skin (instead of growing feathers), which connects their arms to their bodies by much more than just the shoulder, giving a significant flying surface. Mind you, their arms are also incredibly long in relation to their body: if you wanted a human capable of even reasonably effective gliding (never mind powered flying) with such wings, each arm would probably be two metres long at minimum. Bat wings are also incredibly fragile, such that the equivalent of a paper cut would probably pierce them; they heal quickly from small tears, but this is likely to be problematic when scaled up to human proportions.

Still, this is at least something that developed in another mammal, so it's less ridiculous than sprouting two new limbs. Manipulation with such wings, however, is very unlikely; bat "fingers" are the spines in their wings (the thumb sticks out on its own, and as far as I know is basically a vestigial digit), their fingers being used to alter the wing shape. If you wanted to preserve hands in your winged humans, you would need to either sacrifice most of their performance in the air (likely ensuring that wings would never naturally evolve, since they would have no advantage to offset the problems that come with them: natural selection tends to get rid of counterproductive features by killing off those individuals) or accept that hands and wings do not mix in that way and instead rely on the feet to take the place of human hands (which, apart from their beaks, is how birds manipulate and grasp objects).

If you're dealing with humans as known on Earth, the answer is a resounding no. That would be six limbs, whereas basically all animals (or at least anything more closely related to humans than, say, spiders) evolved from an aquatic ancestor with four limbs plus a tail. Evolution tends to work on a gradual basis: it's not about to conjure new limbs out of nowhere. A six-limbed human, at least on Earth, is flatly impossible without absurd mad-scientist-style experiments.

If you want to try merging arms (with hands) and wings together, it becomes slightly less impossible (but still is absurdity to imagine) if you're willing to look to other ways of flight beyond avians. Bats, for instance, have wings made up of their own skin (instead of growing feathers), which connects their arms to their bodies by much more than just the shoulder, giving a significant flying surface. Mind you, their arms are also incredibly long in relation to their body: if you wanted a human capable of even reasonably effective gliding (never mind powered flying) with such wings, each arm would probably be two metres long at minimum. Bat wings are also incredibly fragile, such that the equivalent of a paper cut would probably pierce them; they heal quickly from small tears, but this is likely to be problematic when scaled up to human proportions.

Still, this is at least something that developed in another mammal, so it's less ridiculous than sprouting two new limbs. Manipulation with such wings, however, is very unlikely; bat "fingers" are the spines in their wings (the thumb sticks out on its own, and as far as I know is basically a vestigial digit), their fingers being used to alter the wing shape. If you wanted to preserve hands in your winged humans, you would need to either sacrifice most of their performance in the air (likely ensuring that wings would never naturally evolve) or accept that hands and wings do not mix in that way and instead rely on the feet to take the place of human hands (which, apart from their beaks, is how birds manipulate and grasp objects).

In short, nature is never going to produce what you're looking for; flight is very energy-intensive and requires considerable specialization. Usable hands at the ends of wings falls under "makes wings no longer useful for chief purpose of flying", and natural selection will typically kill off individuals with such counterproductive traits; wings that cannot be used to even glide effectively are worse than useless, being a huge target that slows an individual down on the ground. Turning feet into new hands while having wings is a more reasonable approach, but still an absurd proposition given Earth's evolutionary history.

Source Link
Palarran
  • 7.5k
  • 1
  • 20
  • 46

If you're dealing with humans as known on Earth, the answer is a resounding no. That would be six limbs, whereas basically all animals (or at least anything more closely related to humans than, say, spiders) evolved from an aquatic ancestor with four limbs plus a tail. Evolution tends to work on a gradual basis: it's not about to conjure new limbs out of nowhere. A six-limbed human, at least on Earth, is flatly impossible without absurd mad-scientist-style experiments.

If you want to try merging arms (with hands) and wings together, it becomes slightly less impossible (but still is absurdity to imagine) if you're willing to look to other ways of flight beyond avians. Bats, for instance, have wings made up of their own skin (instead of growing feathers), which connects their arms to their bodies by much more than just the shoulder, giving a significant flying surface. Mind you, their arms are also incredibly long in relation to their body: if you wanted a human capable of even reasonably effective gliding (never mind powered flying) with such wings, each arm would probably be two metres long at minimum. Bat wings are also incredibly fragile, such that the equivalent of a paper cut would probably pierce them; they heal quickly from small tears, but this is likely to be problematic when scaled up to human proportions.

Still, this is at least something that developed in another mammal, so it's less ridiculous than sprouting two new limbs. Manipulation with such wings, however, is very unlikely; bat "fingers" are the spines in their wings (the thumb sticks out on its own, and as far as I know is basically a vestigial digit), their fingers being used to alter the wing shape. If you wanted to preserve hands in your winged humans, you would need to either sacrifice most of their performance in the air (likely ensuring that wings would never naturally evolve, since they would have no advantage to offset the problems that come with them: natural selection tends to get rid of counterproductive features by killing off those individuals) or accept that hands and wings do not mix in that way and instead rely on the feet to take the place of human hands (which, apart from their beaks, is how birds manipulate and grasp objects).