The Largest Flying Creatures
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Current understanding has pterosaurs as avemetatarsalians, just like dinosaurs and birds, and unlike crocodiles, lizards, and snakes.
- In the west it's the Andean Condor
- Globally, the african Kori Bustard.
Now, birds can be tough. The prime example is the conflict between the Australian Army (including the Royal Australian Artillery) and 20,000 emus known as the Great Emu War. The outcome was a decisive Emu victory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War
Some people argue that this was not a conflict as it is frivolous to consider Emus as a military force.
However the fact they were capable of the formidable achievement of defeating a regular army proves they can, and this is also not the first conflict involving animals (e.g: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War).
Note that emus cannot fly.
Living things being that large isn't a biological impossibility either; look at whales or dinosaurs.
It just needs enough luck for enough variables to fall in place – and a lack of predators to pick on such a large and slow target – to support the evolution of such a creature. I suspect gas giant planets would have a higher likelihood of such lifeforms.
(Personally I just wish our terrestrial skies could be filled with such majestic sights; just look at real-world photographs of large airships flying low over rolling fields..)
this lungfish gif blew my mind when I first saw it
Edit: yup, “Our languages: Belarusian, English, Russian, Ukrainian.” http://www.the-dialogue.com/en/about/