Flying primates theory

In evolutionary biology, the flying primate hypothesis posits that megabats, a subgroup of Chiroptera (also known as flying foxes), form an evolutionary sister group of primates. The hypothesis began with Carl Linnaeus in 1758, and was again advanced by J.D. Smith in 1980. It was proposed in its modern form by Australian neuroscientist Jack Pettigrew in 1986 after he discovered that the connections between the retina and the superior colliculus (a region of the midbrain) in the megabat Pteropus were organized in the same way found in primates, and different from all other mammals. This was followed up by a longer study published in 1989, in which this was supported by the analysis of many other brain and body characteristics. Pettigrew suggested that flying foxes, colugos, and primates were all descendants of the same group of early arboreal mammals. The megabat flight and the colugo gliding could be both seen as locomotory adaptations to a life high above the ground.

The flying primate hypothesis met resistance from many zoologists. Its biggest challenges were not centered on the argument that megabats and primates are evolutionarily related, which reflects earlier ideas (such as the grouping of primates, tree shrews, colugos, and bats under the same taxonomic group, the Superorder Archonta). Rather, many biologists resisted the implication that megabats and microbats (or echolocating bats) formed distinct branches of mammalian evolution, with flight having evolved twice. This implication was borne out of the fact that microbats do not resemble primates in any of the neural characteristics studied by Pettigrew, instead resembling primitive mammals such as Insectivora in these respects. The advanced brain characters demonstrated in Pteropus could not, therefore, be generalized to imply that all bats are similar to primates.

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