Plausibility of flying people

[keen320]

I have to admit, I find it interesting to read books where people have wings. I even read James Patterson's Maximum Ride series, despite plots that were riddled with holes and often insulted my intelligence or just plain made no sense.

So, I was wondering if humanoids with wings, be they aliens or mutants or whatever, are plausibly capable of flying on Earth. Or do you have to play with the environment or make up some weird biology, like Poul Anderson does in The Man Who Counts/War of the Wingmen(He invents a habitable planet with a higher ratio of atmosphereic density to gravity than Earth) and with his Ythrian race (who have some kind of "supercharger" organ).

Also, does anyone know of any good books with this kind of thing featured prominently, be it sci-fi or fantasy?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I have to admit, I find it interesting to read books where people have wings. I even read James Patterson's Maximum Ride series, despite plots that were riddled with holes and often insulted my intelligence or just plain made no sense.

So, I was wondering if humanoids with wings, be they aliens or mutants or whatever, are plausibly capable of flying on Earth. Or do you have to play with the environment or make up some weird biology, like Poul Anderson does in The Man Who Counts/War of the Wingmen(He invents a habitable planet with a higher ratio of atmosphereic density to gravity than Earth) and with his Ythrian race (who have some kind of "supercharger" organ).

Also, does anyone know of any good books with this kind of thing featured prominently, be it sci-fi or fantasy?

Depends . . . do you want them to be intelligent flying space aliens? If not, then you could postulate a flying alien the size of a flying fox or a giant eagle . . . but it'd be as bright as an eagle. Maybe scale up the brain of a parrot or raven a bit, and you'd have a flying alien caveman.

If it has to be intelligent . . . hmm . . . maybe another species has come along and decided to "uplift" the flying alien cavemen through the Miracle Of Cybernetics. Maybe that other species is Human, and humans use their little flying buddies as scouts in a vast Galactic war, or exploring the multitude of planets looking suspiciously like New Zealand or British Columbia.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I forget the precise physics behind it, but Larry Niven's The Integral Trees has flying humans, the half millennium later descendants of the crew of a crashed sublight explorer ship; no wierd biology at all, but an extremely wierd setting. Basically, a star with a neutron star binary, and orbiting the neutron star, ripped from it's luminous companion- can't remember the length of time he expected this to be livable for, but it wasn't going to plunge in tomorrow- a gas giant, which for tidal reasons has smeared a large envelope of atmosphere along the length of it's orbit.
Near earth density at the centre of the gas torus, native oxygen bearing life, nothing solid apart from the gas giant core in the entire system, all the plants and animals in freefall- and now the humans as well. As near as you can get to an atmosphere without a world, and the wings weren't organic, they were picked up and worn. It's from before he wnet completely libertarian, too, so the politics aren't massively overdone.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Depends . . . do you want them to be intelligent flying space aliens? If not, then you could postulate a flying alien the size of a flying fox or a giant eagle . . . but it'd be as bright as an eagle. Maybe scale up the brain of a parrot or raven a bit, and you'd have a flying alien caveman.

I don't think there's any problem with them being smart. The smallest humans have been around 2 feet tall, and mammal brains like humans aren't even very space efficient compared to birds. A flying species with hands or some approximation would also have a better reason to evolve intelligence than birds do.

For that matter they could be fairly large; the largest fliers in Earth history were the Quetzalcoatlus pterosaurs, estimated to mass between 150-250 pounds. Conditions were different back then of course, but there's no reason a alien planet can't have a bit more oxygen and lower gravity than modern Earth. Of course a humanoid shape isn't as efficient for flight, but I'd think that a small humanoid would be workable; a "flying monkey" basically.

[Broomstick]

So, I was wondering if humanoids with wings, be they aliens or mutants or whatever, are plausibly capable of flying on Earth.

On Earth?

Only if they're really small humanoids. Someone the size of, say, Verne Troyer but with a very different body than what we call human.

Or do you have to play with the environment or make up some weird biology, like Poul Anderson does in The Man Who Counts/War of the Wingmen(He invents a habitable planet with a higher ratio of atmosphereic density to gravity than Earth) and with his Ythrian race (who have some kind of "supercharger" organ).

I actually thought the Ythrians were a pretty good stab at making avian-type sentients, if I'm remembering them correctly. The “supercharger” was too boost the oxygen available to their muscles. He also got it right that air density is in some ways much more critical than the gravity.

Depends . . . do you want them to be intelligent flying space aliens? If not, then you could postulate a flying alien the size of a flying fox or a giant eagle . . . but it'd be as bright as an eagle. Maybe scale up the brain of a parrot or raven a bit, and you'd have a flying alien caveman.

I don't think there's any problem with them being smart. The smallest humans have been around 2 feet tall, and mammal brains like humans aren't even very space efficient compared to birds. A flying species with hands or some approximation would also have a better reason to evolve intelligence than birds do.

Birds need brain power in order to deal with rapid input and processing of vision, as well as dealing with three dimensional spaces, navigation, and memory. Their feet are also quite dexterous already. The smartest birds on earth are already pretty intelligent creatures, and from my viewpoint a bird species evolving greater brain power is quite plausible, and they already have “hands” of a sort.

One of the obstacles is that both flight and a big brain are very energy intensive. Having both at the same time.... your flying humanoids are going to be really big eaters, and probably favor calorie/nutrient dense foods. Flying birds favor things like seeds, fruits, and animal flesh over, say, grazing. Grazing birds tend to be flightless: see ostrich. (The hoatzin is, as far as I know, the only “grazer” that flies. They aren't particularly good at it, in comparison to other species of birds, but I suppose they do well enough for their needs)

The need to secure a steady supply of “superfood” might be an additional impetus for such a species to evolve greater intelligence and civilization.

For that matter they could be fairly large; the largest fliers in Earth history were the Quetzalcoatlus pterosaurs, estimated to mass between 150-250 pounds. Conditions were different back then of course, but there's no reason a alien planet can't have a bit more oxygen and lower gravity than modern Earth. Of course a humanoid shape isn't as efficient for flight, but I'd think that a small humanoid would be workable; a "flying monkey" basically.

Contour feathers might help a lot with streamlining – take the feathers off any bird and it's considerably less aerodynamic.

Due to the energy demands of both flight and intelligence, I don't think these flyers would be at the upper range of flyable size. Also, the square-cube law is an absolute bitch when it comes to flying animals. You can have large flyers that do a lot of gliding and have some difficulties getting off the ground (California condors like to launch off cliffs, albatrosses actually require a runway) or smaller flyers that are much better all around flyers. Again, high intelligence/big brain will also impose significant demands on them. They'll probably work out best being significantly smaller than the human average.

And really – I can't emphasize this enough – it's the atmospheric density that's the most important environmental factor. Gravity is really not that big a deal for flight. I got a first hand look at this in my flying days – same plane, same runway, but the change in atmospheric density between summer and winter, due solely to temperature differences, meant that it could take 2-3 times the distance to get an airplane off the ground. A kilometer's difference in the elevation between two runways can have a similar effect, yet a human being walking around on the ground won't notice the difference. The birds notice, because the same physics apply to them as to airplanes.

Your flying humanoids may not be the best of flyers – that may be a trade-off for high intelligence. Capable of flight, but perhaps not such strong flyers as their animal ancestors or close relatives among other species on their planet. They may favor launching from a tower of some sort. They may prefer to live at lower elevations due to making it easier to fly.

[Eleas]

The idea of a 'superfood' struck me as well. There would be a corollary to it though -- namely the other organisms that would have evolved to compete for said heavy-duty 'fuel'. Which might be interesting to speculate on.

[madd0ct0r]

unless you need to be able to fly to get said superfood.

[Eleas]

unless you need to be able to fly to get said superfood.

Even then, there would be flight-capable competitors around who traded high intelligence for increased capability in other areas. Just like on Earth, in fact.

[Korto]

Ah, memories.

How NOT to do it

A better way about it The avian species is about half way down the page. Control-F for "Annite". I've got to do a bit more on that sometime.

I feel you basically need to acknowledge that intelligence has moderate to high metabolic upkeep, and flight has high metabolic upkeep, and it's therefore hard to combine the two. Sacrifices have to be made.
Some of it can be compensated for by mentioning "very efficient metabolism" and "high-value food" (good precedent, see hummingbirds)

[Broomstick]

Hummingbirds basically go into a state of hibernation every night (technically, it's "torpor", but it's still a state of vastly reduced metabolism). Why? So they don't starve to death. Every. Single. Night. That's an example of the sort of adaptions and trade-offs birds have made in order to fly as they do.

I have three parrots, rather common sorts - two cockatiels and a green-cheeked conure. They're domestically bred, and spend 12 or more hours a day sleeping (which is perfectly normal for them, and indeed, that's about how much rest they should have). They don't have nearly the calorie requirements of their wild cousins, but they're hungry all the fucking time. If I don't make sure they eat before bedtime they'll wake up six hours later screaming to be fed (and the conure actually does have sufficient vocabulary to verbally ask for food and water). They see food they get frantic. And clever - I've had to replace two sugar bowls after one of the parrots figured out to get into them (and white sugar is like crack to little birds), they've learned how to have one distract the human while the others disassemble the human's sandwich, and the conure has figured out how to pry the lids off tupperware containers. The cockatiels are trying to copy the trick, but I think in their case they just don't have the physical strength to do it, thank goodness. I just have to worry about them chewing into the containers.

Wild birds have an even greater problem getting enough to eat just to keep themselves alive, much less raise offspring, but they manage, because they're clever. This is how researchers find stuff like crows placing nuts in front of car wheels to get them cracked open, apparently having figured out the green light/red light thing. If you really look at wild birds they're actually aggressive little bastards and they fight constantly over food. Hummingbirds are actually some of the most aggressive species, downright vicious when it comes to fighting off other birds from food sources. They have to be, they don't have a choice - they can starve to death in less than a day.

So... you're proposing creatures with TWO high-energy features that are intelligent. They might well be incredibly aggressive and combative by our standards. They might also have elaborate social customs to channel and moderate those traits in order for their society to exist.

[Ahriman238]

There was a book I had to read some time back, Growing Wings. It involved a random mutation that makes a certain miniscule percentage of people grow functional wings during puberty (I know, I know.) One catch though, they're bulky, awkward, and almost totally useless for flying. They can sort of glide, from a great enough height with a mechanical system to give them the speed, but that's it. So most of the winged-people go for the "clumsy home-amputation" option.

Eventually they're able to upgrade from kind-of-sort-of-gliding to kind-of-sort-of-flying, for very short distances only, by working out their wings a lot, filling a number of water-wings and other wearable balloons with helium and making them up like the Michelin Man. Feel free to shred the book to your heart's content.

Or, in OA they have "pixies" humans genetically engineered to be about six inches tall who often wear winged-flight packs. They have to have extensive computer-implants to maintain baseline intelligence though.

[keen320]

For the record, since I didn't think to specify this, and people seem to be thinking I am, I am not writing a story or fanfic about this, I was just curious.

[Zixinus]

Just a few things I picked up from here and there:
- On Earth, you can't do it. Gravity and atmospheric density does not favour you.
- Unless you "cheat" and somehow metabolize hydrogen (which by itself is a energy-demanding process) to make yourself lighter. I'm not sure about the numbers, but it may end up being easier to do it than growing wings and trying to fly with them. Maybe a species that "makes" wings while being able to natively make hydrogen?
- The human body is very, very unsuited for it. Aside the energy requirements, our shoulders and bones simply don't work in any such way. Birds have adopted many evolutionary traits that allows them to effectively fly: hollow bones, a powerful heart, air-bladders, etc.
- Another thing: heat. Way up there, especially as you go higher and higher, the air is COLD. That's often one of the things that people tend to forget when making angelic-wannabe-humanoids.

[CBG]

Yeah, grvity and atmosphere density are the main factors in how big winged creatures can get, at what price, and if they make sense at all. On Earth, the conditions aren't very good at all, and it means that Earth's flying winged creatures need to have a relatively large ratio of wing area and wing muscle strength to their body mass, and unless they want to resemble a winged blimp, using low density gasses doesn't help much.

[Starglider]

Depends what you mean by 'flying'. You could plausibly equip relatively conventional humanoids with unfolding or inflatable biological structures that are equivalent to a hanglider or paraglider. The usefulness of this would be rather limited. For powered flight capable of gaining altitude and achieving significant endurance absent of thermals, it is theoretically possible in the sense that it's within the thermodynamic limits. This is supported by the fact that we do have human powered aircraft and human mass/size UAVs with useful payloads. However the only way you are going to make something comparable to a typical angel/hawkman/etc is to use radically different biology that is closer to engineered nanomachinery than anything on earth. There is basically no way that could evolve, because aside from the lack of incremental paths for the biochemistry, the human form is just horribly unsuitable for the job and the 'angel' would be ridiculously outcompeted by other creatures that use the same biochemistry but more sensible forms (kind of how tanks utterly destroy giant robots built with the same technology).