Could my species exist naturally
The species I have created, are a species of gliding reptiles. They look primarily like horned lizards and measure up to 20 feet long, 7 feet wide, and 5-6 feet tall. however, they posses wings that stretch out over 1 mile and are 25 feet wide.
My species do have secondary wings, these wings are a bit smaller than the first wings, only being 32 feet long and 5 feet wide. The wings of the species are photosynthetic and like whales, the species will open their mouths for a short time frame to capture small, krill like organisms that fly in massive quantities. My species can sleep whilst gliding, but prefer to land atop high mountains and wrap their body's up with their wings to assure a safe sleeping area.
What I want to know is, could my species feasibly evolve in my story and if not, what can be removed or added to help them evolve?
To clarify, the world in my story is very earth like, but only posses a slightly lower gravity than earths.
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1 answer
they posses wings that stretch out over 1 mile
Your species is extremely implausible. There are very few structures, period, that are this large; in fact, the only such structures I'm aware of would be bridges, or maybe causeways, all of which are stationary and require a lot of engineering to support themselves even so. Wings this large? Forget it. Just building biological wings the size of a jumbo jet, less than an order of magnitude smaller, is generally considered extremely difficult to implausible.
"Slightly lower gravity" doesn't help. Even in microgravity you'd have some trouble justifying something this large.
...And this, as Adrian reminded me, is only the start of your problems. Even if you somehow magically overcame the raw structural problems, your wings are so grossly out of proportion to the rest of the body that they can't possibly work. We'll ignore blood circulation and energy requirements, since you said they're photosynthetic; basically, your critters have enormous leaves on their bodies. Even so, just moving the things would require huge muscles way out of proportion to the rest of their bodies.
There is a solution to this, at least if you can overcome the structural problems; the wings are filled with lighter-than-air gas. However, your critters are going to be effectively sessile.
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