Comparative limb growth of a bat (top) and a mouse, in utero development. From the paper below.
One of my favourite statistics is this: one in every four mammal species you meet is a rat or rodent, and one in every five is a bat. That's right, nine in every 20 mammal species is covered by one of these taxa: we may as well treat rodents and bats as the standard mammalian species type. So a paper that combines them has to be good. Quintessence of Dust (what a title!) gives an excellent summary and discussion of a paper that tested evolutionary hypotheses of the evolution of bat wings by transplanting bat limb growth genes into mice and observing the result. Both the paper and the post are awesome.
And by the way, although in German "bat" is rendered "Die Fledermaus" as every opera buff knows, bats aren't flying mice. Chiroptera is a whole distinct group from Rodentia.
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Even weirder than "Fledermaus", chiroptera are called bald-mouses in French (litterally translating). I don't know why, but I'll try investigating...
Well, apparently the French name evolved this way:
Latine origine: cawa sorix(owl-mouse)
--> turning 'calves sorices' in a plural form
--> corrupted into bald-mouse (calves is close to "chauve"/bald in French)
(source: http://owen.monblogue.branchez-vous.com/2003/6/25/)
Followed closely by antelopes, right? I do wish that people who think there's one ladder to the top in evolution would look at some of those taxa.
Laurent, "owl-mice" sounds like a good name for bats.
As good as ba(l)d... :-)