Re:The Largest Flying Creatures
by Razengan on Saturday April 01, 2017 @10:35AM
(#14012298)
Slightly off-topic, but I imagine there must be a world with balloon-like leviathans serenely floating through the sky like our airships, hosting mini-ecosystems on their bodies and under their shadows..
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I mean, flying things that large aren't a physical impossibility; look at our airships from even 100 years ago.
Living things being that large isn't a biological impossibility either; look at whales or dinosaurs.
It just needs enough luck for enough variables to fall in place – and a lack of predators to pick on such a large and slow target – to support the evolution of such a creature. I suspect gas giant planets would have a higher likelihood of such lifeforms.
(Personally I just wish our terrestrial skies could be filled with such majestic sights; just look at real-world photographs of large airships flying low over rolling fields..)
Re:The Largest Flying Creatures
by kwhitefoot on Saturday April 01, 2017 @11:09AM
(#14012486)
See Fred Pohl's Jem.
And Frank Herbert's "The Jesus Incident".
And Iain M. Banks "The Algebraist"
Pretty much any Culture novel will contain at least one reference to dirigible creatures. :)