> It does beg the question, tho, why we haven’t seen any truly giant bats.
They're mammals, birds have different respiratory system
"Flow-Through Ventilation
Unlike mammals, birds breathe through continuous one-directional flow of air through the respiratory system. We take air in and breathe it out, sort of like the tide moves in and out of a bay. As a result, our breathing system is said to be tidal. Avians have a non-tidal respiratory system, with air flowing more like a running stream."
That's why mammals can't breathe at high altitudes that birds can, but I'm not sure if that affects the body plan much in terms of size. The largest birds are smaller than the largest mammals on land or at sea. Then again, lower oxygen levels compared to the past seems to be a limitation for insect sizes too (who have an even less efficient respiratory system).
I also don't think it's the warmbloodedness. There are giant mammals in general after all.
Perhaps it is because bats form large, dense colonies? There is only so many resources available in any given ecological niche, so then for any species that fills a niche one would expect those resources to be divided either among many small individuals or a few large ones. Bat evolution chose the "big colony" route, which I assume favors smaller individuals.
> The largest birds are smaller than the largest mammals on land or at sea
With all my respect to you theory I think comparing size of animals should not ignore the medium they moved in: water, land or air. Weight is (loosely but still) related to size. It’s probably not a coincidence the largest mammals lives on water where they need less energy to supper their weight, and it’s not a coïncidents the largest mammals on earth are way bigger that bats.
The biggest bats are ~1.7m which is not so far from biggest albatros (3.7m).
Also consider the biggest bird (Ostriches) can’t fly. Now I’m trying to picture a swimming gigantic bird.
Well, fair. But birds are warmblooded too so that doesn't change much there, and on top of that the difference in requiring bigger lungs for the same amount of oxygen extraction would exactly add much weight per volume, so to speak
The most caloric dense source of nutrition available in nature? I don't see why that is a limitation to body size for a flying animal - quite the opposite!
also, volume grows as the cube of linear dimensions which also puts an upper limit on size, as wing surface area only grows as the square (not sure what/how lift grows relative to)
this is almost in "not even wrong" territory, but for the fact that autotrophs are definitionally the entry point for abiotic energy into edible calories for animals, and the observation that the largest terrestrial megafauna are herbivorous.
bamboo is not calorie dense to humans, because we've lost the ability to digest most of it, but pecans are absolutely more calorie dense than even fatty beef.
all else being equal, an ideal carbohydrate source is more calorically dense than an equivalent ideal lean protein source due to the balance in the thermic effect of food between the two. most mammals outside the obligate carnivores are really well optimized for getting calories from plants— this is why we have amylase in our saliva.
Since it's about football you no longer have to "check with the Russians", they're banned from all major competitions. One major misnomer is referring to Soviet citizens as Russians, the majority of USSR population weren't Russians but other ethnicities. Wikipedia has a bunch of this history falsehoods specially when talking about Red Army brigades consisting entirely of other ethnic minorities and referring to them as Russians. Actually calling Canadians- Americans is more correct, at least it's technically correct which is best kind of correct.
And a lot of European weapon systems have US components, so if Americans want they can certainly freeze and prohibit supply of military aid to the point where it won't be sustainable to resist Russian assaults.
> There have been many such endosymbiotic events in the history of life - there are subfields of evolutionary biology that study these processes.
Exactly, if mitochondria is alive then so is chloroplasts and who knows what else. The line needs to be drawn somewhere, also life and death isn't as clear-cut as many used to believe
It's sad but it might eventually. I would imagine to the end of Trump cadence we'll be paying with x-coin in supermarkets, both he and Elon will be making tons of money. Trumps and Elons x-coin will have tariffs built in to it and you won't be paying taxes if you use it /s
you shouldn't pretend, just cancel your plan, do it!