What creatures fly besides birds, insects & bats?

Question

Call me an idiot but I'd love to know what creatures do fly besides the typical birds, insects & bats?

Answer 1

If you're talking about true powered flight, you've already listed the answers.  There are some who claim that a few of the flying fish actually get some power lift out of their wings, but I've never really seen any data to confirm that.  All other "flying" creatures are basically gliders.  Some can extend their time in the air by very shallow glides, but they can't actually fly.

Some extinct animals could fly, the pterosaurs, for example, but in the present world - it's insects; bats; and birds. Those are the only powered flight animals alive today.

If you want to include gliding animals, then you can have some snakes, frogs, marsupials (dusky glider),(Greater Phalanger), etc. ; mammals - (flying squirrels, colugos, etc)

Answer 2

Well by definition of the word 'fly' you have named the 3 groups of true flyers. Others such as flying squirrels and flying fish are NOT flying at all but GLIDING. There are many animals that can glide, none of which constitute 'flight'. There was a prehistoric animal class that made up the other group of flyers, none of which exist today. These are (or were) the pterosaurs.

Answer 3

some squirrels

Answer 4

Bats are the only mammals that fly, making up over 980 species of the (about) 4000 species of mammals.  Reptiles, amphibians and fish have no true flying species.  Insects have, by definition, six legs, so there may be other animals that are insect-like, but I'm not the expert to ask.

Answer 5

People.

Answer 6

Depends, the flying fish flips its self out of the water with its tail, and then glides, so the mechanism that powers its flight(its tail) is seperate from the gliding mechanism (its wing like fins), as opposed to things like birds and insects where this is combine into flapping wings.

There's a good video that did the rounds on youtube a while back of the flying fish http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2eMX_pGN...

It really is amazing how long it can stay out of the water

Answer 7

umm..... go to National Geographic's website