It's no secret that creationists and fundamentalists tend to turn a blind eye to the progresses made in various scienific disciplines over the past 500 years or so, and in particular those made in evolutionary biology. I am, in other words, quite used to reading horribly uninformed and wrongful ideas of what evolution is, but I will never get used to the fact that these people seem to revel in being willfully ignorant. There really is no excuse in this day and age where pretty much every conceivable bit of information pertaining to the accumulated knowledge of mankind is available to everyone at the press of a button.
There are many aspects of the theory of evolution that these people seem to not want to understand, and among these is the concept of transitional species - species in between fish and land dwelling animals for instance. These people seem to expect that the way evolution works is by having a duck laying eggs from which a dog hatches, and no matter how many times they're told that evolution does not work that way they just seem incapable of taking it in.
Here's an illustration I found on the Missing Universe Museum website:
They are using the sequence of images to illustrate their idea of how evolution works in order to show how a horse should evolve flight. However, in doing so they're also ignoring the fact that 1) evolution does not work that way, 2) flying mammals have four limbs, not six, 3) a horse would never evolve flight due to weight vs. muscle capacity, 4) aerodynamics doesn't allow for it, and 5) wings wouldn't be a survival trait for a horse. They also don't seem to understand (or don't want to understand) the fact that a winged horse (a Pegasus) would effectively disprove evolution.
1. Evolution doesn't work that way.
No, it really doesn't. Evolution works through natural selection by breeding. Throughout the history of life on our planet it has been the females of the species who has effectively been deciding upon the route evolution would take. If, in some animal society, the favored trait was flamboyant plumage, the more garish the better, then the male animals with the most garish and flamboyant plumage would get to breed with the most females, thus making it an evolutionary trait to have flamboyant plumages and the ones who didn't would get weeded out (look at peacocks).
2. Flying mammals have four limbs, not six.
You need only google flying mammals to see that this is true. Bats, for instance (they are mammals, and not birds as stated in the bible, by the way) fly by the aid of webbed wings that has been stretched between the elongated fingers on their forelimbs. This makes them te only mammals capable of sustained flight, rather than other flying mammals such as flying squirrels who glide rather than fly.
3. Weight vs. muscle capacity.
Birds have evolved for flight through shedding weight and the favorisation of feathers. Their bones are hollow and filled with ar, they have no teeth and their bodies have evolved into highly aerodynamic shapes. The earliest known bird under modern definition is the Archaeopteryx from the late jurassic period (150 - 145 million years ago) which marks a definite step from land dwelling theropod dinosaurs to what we today know as modern avians. Sustained flight takes an enormous amount of muscle energy, and the larger the animal the more muscle vs. weight will be needed. But also aerodynamics play a part in determining the maximum size and weight of any flying animal, which is of course another reason why birds have evolved the way they have (beaks, feathers, low weight, hollow bones and so on). The Condor and the Wandering Albatross are the largest flying animals in the world today. But the largest flying animals in the fossil record are the pterosaurs Quetzalcoatlus and the Hatzegopteryx both with wingspans of 12m or more, making them the size of a small bus. However, these pterosaurs had evolved into highly secialized creatures to be capable of flight, such as, again, hollow air filled bones, elongated snouts for aerodynamics and so on. Horses, on the other hand, are heavy animals with more or less solid bones and are not particularly aerodynamic.
4. Aerodynamics.
Look to point 3.
5. Wings would not be a survival trait for horses.
How does evolution work? It works through the means of natural selection. Natural variation occurs among the individuals of any population of organisms. Many of these differences do not affect survival (such as differences in eye color in humans), but some differences may improve the chances of survival of a particular individual. A rabbit that runs faster than others may be more likely to escape from predators, and algae that are more efficient at extracting energy from sunlight will grow faster. Individuals that have better odds for survival also have better odds for reproduction. Horses do not need flight to escape predators; they have evolved highly effective fight or flight responses as well as high speed and endurance in running across solid ground, making the fastest runners the most likely to proliferate. Thus, the ability to run fast and long is a favored trait in horses, and those that are capable of this will have a greater chance of breeding.
Transitional species.
Creationists seem to always misunderstand the concept of transitional species, often referring to them as "missing links" - which, by the way, is a nonsensical term. They don't understand the fact that evolution is a relentless ongoing process that never rests, never stops and never has any concideration for anything or anyone. Evolution is not a conscious process, and it has no will on it's own. Evolution just is, and every species to ever have existed were, and are, transitional species.
