Page 30 - The Origin of Birds and Flight

28 The Origin of Birds and Flight

such benefits, this theory is still inconsistent: The movement that birds
employ to catch insects is very different from the up-and-down move-
ment they use for flight. To catch prey, birds need to move their wings
backward and forward. Forearms developing into wings would there-
fore represent a disadvantage for any biped attempting to catch insects,
and the animal would in any case have no need for such a change. This
contradicts the claims of evolutionists, since they maintain that organs
develop in response to needs.
Furthermore, wings and feathers that did develop in living things
seeking to catch insects, would become damaged when animals used
them for hunting. This is another inconsistency in terms of the insect-net
model.
If the forearms of a creature had evolved to catch prey, then it would
need gaps in its “hands,” rather like those in a flyswatter, to let the air
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pass through. Yet bird arms possess no such gaps; they have been fully
created for flight. There are no gaps even in the wings of Archaeopteryx,
the oldest known bird and possessor of a perfect avian body. This is one
of the proofs that it did not seek to hunt insects by using its wings, which
totally refutes the model in question.

The “Wing-Beating” Model
This scenario maintains that the creatures seized their prey with their
jaws, using their forearms as bilateral stabilizers when leaping into the
air. It hypothesizes that growth in these forefeet led to a gradual increase
in lifting power, thus enabling them to leap further and hunt better.
Gradual improvements in the wingtips are alleged to have increased
their lifting power and made possible more powerful flight.
This model’s claims are equally unfounded. First, it’s impossible for
various changes to take place in an animal’s offspring on account of
movements that a parent constantly performs. For such a phenomenon
did take place, these features would have to be transmitted to subse-
quent generations genetically. This fallacy is an extension of a claim
made by the French biologist Lamarck at a time when the science of