Kites and Birds question

[Mike]

Hey guys, I got this question today.
Any ideas? How about if someone asks the same question over at Kitebuilder too?

I have a somewhat unusual question for you that I am not sure you will be able to help me with but thought I'd ask. We are trying to put together an exhibit about what birds and kites have in common and I was trying to see if you would be able to compare any of the bird wing types to any particular style of kite.

Here are some examples of bird wing types:

Elliptical--maneuvering in forested or brushy habitiats--sparrows, doves, woodpeckers

High-aspect ration--birds that feed in flite or make long migrations so can fly for a while (examples are hummingbirds, swallows)

Dynamic soaring wings--take advantage of strong reliable winds over the ocean--albatross

High lift wings- predators like hawks that carry heavy foods. --owls, vultures, etc.

So having read those descriptions of bird wing types, do any kite styles seem to be similar off the top of your head?

[Knoted4ever]

There are, of course, those kites that are painted and shaped to look like birds.

I think that the smaller dual line kites are more like swallows (with a lot of maneuverability); whereas the large dualies are more like the gliding birds that soar steadily... like the condors or turkey vultures. No kites can replicate the true grace and maneuverability of most birds though; they are not even close.

There was a special on pterosaurs where they tried to make a large replication thing and fly it. They had a lot of difficulty with it and it crashed a lot!

[Jim Foster]

I don't know if kites and birds really have anything in common except every once in a while they do share a kite line for a short period of time.

[Jynx]

I don't know if kites and birds really have anything in common except every once in a while they do share a kite line for a short period of time.

Yeah... Until this old lady walks up to me and angrily yells... "You know they had the sky first" ...frowns, and stomps away!

Oh-Oh! (I was left speechless)...Sorry birdie!

(BTW: No pigeons were harmed during my unfortunate/intentional act!)

[Jim Foster]

I don't know if kites and birds really have anything in common except every once in a while they do share a kite line for a short period of time.

Yeah... Until this old lady walks up to me and angrily yells... "You know they had the sky first" ...frowns, and stomps away!

Oh-Oh! (I was left speechless)...Sorry birdie!

(BTW: No pigeons were harmed during my unfortunate/intentional act!)

You could have told her to go fly a kite.

[Knoted4ever]

Birds are descendants from dinosaurs (they actually are dinosaurs)... and they had the ground first too. They dominated us mammals long enough; i'm flying my kites! Get the H out of my way!

(What i like about kites is that they don't crap at you while you are looking up... and, from a cage in the garage, they don't tell you that "you are a smelly, old fart!")

[Mike]

As a mammal, I beg to differ. I believe the first mammals pre-date the first proto-birds. Triassic for mammals, Jurrasic for the first birds. I'm too lazy to google it though, so you can prove me wrong. :)

[Knoted4ever]

It's triassic for both, i think, in terms of mammals and dinosaurs; proto-birds were later, but their predecessors were still dinosaurs. I still think that they were first, though, because what many paleontologists called the first mammals was quite a stretch.

[Knoted4ever]

I went back to the computer and found this:

The evolution of mammals within the synapsid lineage (mammal-like-reptiles) was a gradual process that took approximately 70 million years, beginning in the mid-Permian. By the mid-Triassic, there were many species that looked like mammals, and the first true mammals appeared in the early Jurassic. The earliest known marsupial, Sinodelphys, appeared 125 million years ago in the early Cretaceous, around the same time as Eomaia, the first known eutherian (member of placentals' "parent" group); and the earliest known monotreme, Teinolophos, appeared two million years later. After the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs (birds are generally regarded as the surviving dinosaurs) and several other mammalian groups, placental and marsupial mammals diversified into many new forms and ecological niches throughout the Tertiary, by the end of which all modern orders had appeared.

And... as i suspected, we have a common ancestor...(i've got a dinosaur vertebra of a thescelosaurus that looks almost exactly like a human vertebra; i'm going to show it to my orthopedic doctor the next time i go in)....

The first fully terrestrial vertebrates were amniotes — their eggs had internal membranes that allowed the developing embryo to breathe but kept water in. This allowed amniotes to lay eggs on dry land, while amphibians generally need to lay their eggs in water (a few amphibians, such as the Surinam toad, have evolved other ways of getting round this limitation). The first amniotes apparently arose in the late Carboniferous from the ancestral reptiliomorphs.
Within a few million years two important amniote lineages became distinct: mammals' synapsid ancestors and the sauropsids, from which lizards, snakes, crocodilians, dinosaurs and birds are descended.

[Mike]

Well, ok then!
Here's a nice chart showing relationships and common ancestry (go back far enough and you share an ancestor with every living thing--plants included!)

[imglr=left]http://www.evogeneao.com/images/Evo_large.gif[/imglr]

[Knoted4ever]

Cool chart! I hate eating my relatives!

One of the fossils that i have is of a number of Haikouella; they were very primitive, fish-like animals, probable chordates and ancestor to vertebrates. They are from the early cambrian period, around 525 million years ago. They had a discernible heart, gill filaments, and a neural chord.