Can humans *technically* evolve into bat-like creatures? How many generations would it take?

[♔Goodguy1066♔]

I stress the word technically a million times.
My question is; could Homo Sapiens, by means of conscious natural breeding, evolve from this:

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into this:

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?

I specifically ask about the bat because it has recently been brought to my attention that the bat skeleton, along with (I believe) all mammel skeletons, is the same as a human skeleton (the toe bone's connected to the leg bone/the leg bone's connected to the hip bone...) only with some bones shorter or longer or stronger. Nearly all species have changed drastically in their history, we used to look something like salamaders, due to natural selection (I think).
So let's say we breeded very short people with long fingered people and slowly picked out and strengthened bat-like charactaristics in the generations that followed (take out of the "experiment" anybody with normal fingers and short tail bones etc.), gradually get them to feed on insects, fruits and flower nectar, and most importantly not use genetic science by inserting bat DNA into the human's or whatever science can acheive these days. Is it possible? What would it take? How long would it take? Does my question even make sense?

I'm sorry for my deep ignorance on the subject of evolution, I'm just curious and I'm having this Darwin phase. Finally, no creationists welcome.

[Himster]

We're too big, it's too late, we'd have to shrink first, return to the trees, we'd require a cause to need to leap from tree to tree, eventually developing a membrane that eventually develops and connects between digits............. that'd be hundreds of thousands of years (if the pressure to change was great).

If the atmosphere drastically changes and our bones become honey-combed somehow then humans evolving into humans may be possible.

[Manco]

The required conditions for something like that to take place make it practically impossible.

[♔Goodguy1066♔]

The required conditions for something like that to take place make it practically impossible.

Hence the stress on the word technically.
Let's say we had a very realistic interactive computer simulation of evoloution. You take a group of very short humans, breed them, breed the next generation with each-other to make even shorter humans, take only the long fingered very short humans to breed a race of such creatures (now they've branched into a new species I presume), and so on and so forth.
Would our realistic simulation (that works following the laws of evoloution) manage to transform these homo sapiens into a race of flying, squeaking, up-sidedown sleeping bat-like mammels via only natural selection?
Also, why can we not do it in RL? I mean, if we had a large amount of people willing to have sex with anybody they're told to, why could we not use the same strategy to eventually produce after about 200 years a generation of bat-like creatures descended from Homo Sapiens?

We're too big, it's too late, we'd have to shrink first, return to the trees, we'd require a cause to need to leap from tree to tree, eventually developing a membrane that eventually develops and connects between digits............. that'd be hundreds of thousands of years (if the pressure to change was great).

How would we develop membranes though? Evoloution isn't conscious, it doesn't know we have a need to glide from tree to tree and eventually to fly! I know I'm asking way too many questions, but how did a mammel like the bat develop wings in the first place? Does evoloution develop to an animal's needs?

[Himster]

How would we develop membranes though? Evoloution isn't conscious, it doesn't know we have a need to glide from tree to tree and eventually to fly! I know I'm asking way too many questions, but how did a mammel like the bat develop wings in the first place? Does evoloution develop to an animal's needs?

Evolution doesn't know, but a squirrel in the trees instinctively recognises another squirrel with a slightly larger membrane has a better chance of survival and therefore will give that better chance to his/her babies. That is natural selection.

[Plant]

Evolution doesn't know, but a squirrel in the trees instinctively recognises another squirrel with a slightly larger membrane has a better chance of survival and therefore will give that better chance to his/her babies. That is natural selection.

No, that would be selection through mating characteristics ie sexual selection. A slightly larger membrane giving a better chance of survival, giving larger chance of passing favourable genes will be natural selection. Selection through recognition of mating characteristics is not. If a squirrel does not recognise that a slightly larger membrane gives a better chance of survival, natural selection will still occur.

[Dr. Croccer]

There's no need for us to sprout wings.

[Jom]

Technically a mammal could become similar to any other mammal if the drive for adaptation were there. It would take a very very very long time, though, especially with the scale of adaptation we're talking about here: membranes of skin attached to elongated digits. I'm not sure if the shape of the skull would really change much unless it drastically affected aerodynamics and gave one individual the edge over others.

[Plant]

Well, it's important to note that as mass increases, the membrane area must increase more proportionally. So, a human must evolve into bat size before having to evolve membranes to fly otherwise, they will be unable to fly. There really isn't any biological impetus towards such characteristic you want, except by selective breeding. I'm not sure how the evolutionary history of bats went, but I'm guessing it came with small gliding mammals, but there are no theoretical limits to why humans cannot eventually be selected to a certain shape or design so long as the class are the same. Afterall, a common ancestor was shared at some point. The potential is there.

[green tea]

It would not take 200, but some million years. After the vanishing of the dinosaurs, it took some millions of years to develop whales, wolfs, horses, elephants and bats from some probably very small rat-like creatures. And a problem with humans is the long time needed for getting old enough to have children. If you have an animal that would be adult at the age of one, you could have one generation each year (so each year the possibility for a small change in the DNA). With humans, that would take at least 15 times longer.

[Turtle Hammer]

It's technically possible, but the timescale involved, and the fact that evolution is essentially random would make it as close to being "0" on the scale of probability as it can be while still remaining technically possible.

And remember, evolution happens when a random change in something succeeds, it's not that things automaticly adapt, just the best adapted ones survive. It's perfectly possible for a mutation to be completely counter productive, but these will not thrive. As such, I imagine your bat people would never happen naturally, as the steps to go from human to bat would be counterproductive to survival and therefore reproduction. It'd have to be the most bat crazy eugenics ever.

[Phier]

The problem is the human starting point. Most of the species all started out far smaller than they are now, size and specialization happened along the way. Going 'backwards' though not technically a correct way to think about it, would be far more difficult.

Could it be done? Yes, but thinking of conditions that would lead to it naturally is eluding me, it would require more of a forced breeding program for a few million years. If things got bad enough that our best survival was as bats, odds are we would go extinct long before we could adapt.

[Erwin Rommel]

evoloutionise
evoloutionise
evoloutionise
evolve

Tenso

[Sphere]

There is nothing technically impossible about it. Given enough generations there is no reason you couldn't do it. Indeed we still share a great deal of genes with bats, mostly its just that the controlling layer of genes (those that don't directly produce features, but control how and how long other genes develop features) would need to be changed. (i.e. both have very similar underlying genes for growing finger bones, so just genes controlling how long/thin they develop would need to be changed). Also I would suspect there is a large amount of inactive genes that would need to be reactivated and vise-versa.

This gets to the real interesting developments in modern genetics that are showing that genetic codes have evolved to be highly adaptable. In the past the genome was thought of as a blueprint, were each gene had an important part to play and needed to be changed to get a new trait. Now we have learned that the genome is more like a menu of genes were a higher level of controlling genes picks and chooses what genes to use and how long to use them. This is why we can share such an astounding amount of our DNA with other very different creatures; because we share more or less the same menu of genes.

[mp0295]

Give me a time accelerator, and lots of money. I'll report back.
In order to fly, we would have to lose many of the things that make us human. Smaller brain comes to mind. We will have to have huge wings, and eat A LOT. I can't even think of conditions that would promote bat-ism. I would say 500 million years it would take. Just a guestimation

[Big War Bird]

Yes it could be done and probably acheivable in much less time that people here are speculating. In our evolution simulator we presumably know every gene or variable that needs to change in order to evolve our batmen. Natural evolution took wrong turns, made u-turns and arrived at dead ends. Our experiment doesn't have to go through that. We already know what our end result is supposed to be.

Anyway here is a fun evolution program to create your own lifeforms:

Biomorph.

[Helm]

The process can be greatly accelerated with use of the Spice though you will need massive levels of exposure.

[DisgruntledGoat]

The process can be greatly accelerated with use of the Spice though you will need massive levels of exposure.

I'd rather be a bat than a worm.

[chilon]

If you include possible genetic mutation technologies of the next 100 years it is certainly possibly in less time than achieving it "naturally" with natural selection.

[LSJ]

Not every animal will go through every possible adaptation. Maybe humans, even if the same stressors and selection are applied that allowed for bats to evolve, will never take that route. Species that fail to evolve to meet a changed environment exist, or rather, existed. They die off because they can't compete. While it could be possible, it could also never happen, no matter how long the program went on for.