I saw on PBS last night that fruit bats may have been primates that learned to fly?

Question

Can anyone clear this up please?

Answer 1

bats are most closely related to primates...NOT rodents like most people think. They have NEVER been considered a rodent by scientists, they have always been thought to be realted to primates.

Answer 2

Actually, there has been a genuine scientific debate over the last few decades about where bats belong in the mammal tree. Nobody has argued that bats are primates who learned to fly, per se, but rather that primates are bats who stopped flying.

To be more specific, let's examine the group referred to as "bats". There are microbats, mostly insectivorous, and there are megabats, such as fruit bats. In the 1980s, an Australian scientist named John Pettigrew published a theory that microbats and megabats were not closely related, and that megabats were actually part of a phylogenetic group that includes primates. In other words -- primates and megabats shared a common ancestor.

Pettigrew based his theory on a number of anatomical and physiological similarities between megabats and primates, including their eyes, brains, fingers, and blood cells.

This theory was controversial, but not ridiculous. Scientists considered it, debated it, and analyzed the evidence for it. In the end, genetic data seemed to paint a different picture, and now the majority of scientists consider the theory not well supported by the evidence. But it's important to point out that science -- especially cutting-edge science -- does not "prove" or "disprove." It usually "supports" or "does not support".

A great example of the scientific process at work.

Answer 3

according to this website it has been considered as a possibility as the old world fruit bats are noticeably different in a number of characteristics from other bats. But then they also noticeably different to primates, though they share some similarities.
My impression is that the question isn't entirely resolved yet, but evidence tends to favor the not-primate hypothesis.

Answer 4

For some reason people tend to think of bats as rodents, but if you ever get a chance to examine one's skull, you will very quickly see that their dentition definitely resembles that of a monkey more closely than that of any rodent. They have small incisors, somewhat pronounced canines, and molars, not the huge incisors no canines and molars of a rodent.

Not saying that they used to be primates, but I do remember hearing that they are more closely related to primates than rodents....

Flying monkeys anyone?

Answer 5

This is just an assumption, but not possibly a true case of evolution.

There are lots of evolutionary misconcepts of which this is one.

Check out the primates evolution tree, (http://www.uiowa.edu/~bioanth/images/burma/pg4.jpg) and you can see that not a single bat comes closer. The closest possible uncanny animals are loris and Lemurs.