"Ponderous" is how most people view the Bat - inexorable as a fully-laden supertanker, with the turning radius to match, but bats are incredibly agile, able to spin, turn on a dime, etc. The wings of the bat are used not only for propulsion and lift, but maneuvering as well (unlike birds, which use their tails a lot more for maneuvering). And hey, the bat can be "slow" and still be stupendously wierd - think of a 10-second barrel-roll, or the Zero-G moment as the bat reaches the top of a climb and heads for the deck!
I tried to find stop-motion photgraphs of bats in flight on the web, but came up dry.
RR
It is by my order and for the good of the state that the bearer of this has
done what he has done.
- Richelieu
> Roderick said:
> >
> > It's a God. It doesn't (necessarily) obey the laws of Physics.
> >C'mon - the thing is the size of a small town and it FLIES! It
> >shouldn' even be able to move on its own. (cf all the discussions of
> >movies like "Them" that decry the physics of ants the size of
> >buicks). Why *can't* it be agile as well? If we're going to ignore
> >one physical law, might as well ignore more.
>
> Your point certainly is a valid one but I've always imagined it as
> being fairly slow. I think the Cults of Terror description refers to
> it moving no faster than a horse runs. Being unnaturally slow is
> kind of creepy too. Can you imagine how FAST something that big
> would be if it was as proportionally fast as a real bat? It'd
> probably fly Mach 2 or something!
>
> Oliver
>
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>
>
> 'Weni, Widi, Wiki.' I came, I saw, I added to the story.
>
> The WhiteWallWiki can be found at:
http://www.eparsnip.f2s.com/phpwiki/index.php?FrontPage
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