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b"We'll have a real episode next week but for now, here are two Patreon episodes smashed together into one!\\n\\nHappy birthday to Speed!\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nYi qi Is Neat But Might Not Have Been the Black Screaming Dino-Dragon of Death\\n\\nYi qi could probably glide instead of actually flying:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe Dayak fruit bat [photo by Chien C. Lee]:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\nI\\u2019ve finally finished moving, although I\\u2019m still in the process of unpacking and finding places for all my stuff. I haven\\u2019t had the chance to do any research this week, so this episode is actually two repurposed Patreon episodes, one from June of 2019 and one from May of 2021. They\\u2019re both short episodes so I put them together. I apologize to patrons for not getting something new this week, but I think everyone else will find these animals interesting.\\nBut first, we have a birthday shout-out! A great big happy birthday to Speed! I hope this next year is the very best one yet for you!\\nPlease excuse the varying quality of audio.\\nListener Simon sent me an article about a recently discovered dinosaur with batlike wings, only the second batwinged dinosaur ever discovered. I thought that would make a really neat episode, so thank you, Simon!\\nThese are really recent discoveries, both from the same area of northeastern China. In 2007 a small fossil found by a farmer was bought by a museum. A paleontologist named Xing Xu thought it looked interesting. Once the fossil had been cleaned and prepared for study, Xing saw just how interesting it was.\\nThe dinosaur was eventually named Yi qi, which means strange wing. It was found in rocks dated to about 163 million years ago. Yi qi was about the size of a pigeon and was covered with feathers. The feathers were probably fluffy rather than the sleek feathers of modern birds. But most unusual was a long bony rod that grew from each wrist, called a styliform element. Yi qi also had very long third fingers on each hand. The long finger was connected to the wrist rod by a patagium, or skin membrane, and another patagium connected the wrist rod to the body. So even though it had feathers on its body, it probably didn\\u2019t have feathered wings. Instead, its forelimbs would have somewhat resembled a bat\\u2019s wings.\\nPaleontologists have studied the fossilized feathers with an electron microscope and discovered the structures of pigments that would have given the feathers color. Yi qi was probably mostly black with yellow or brown feathers on the head and arms. It probably also had long tail feathers to help stabilize it in the air.\\nAmbopteryx longibrachium was only discovered in 2017, also in northeastern China. It also lived around 163 million years ago and looked a lot like Yi qi. The fossil is so detailed it shows an impression of fuzzy feathers and even the contents of the animal\\u2019s digestive tract. Its body contained tiny gizzard stones to help it digest plants but also some bone fragments from its last meal, so paleontologists think it was an omnivore. Its hands have styliform elements, although not a wrist rod like Yi qi, and there\\u2019s a brownish film preserved across one of its arms that researchers think are remains of a wing membrane.\\nPaleontologists think the bat-winged dinosaurs were technically gliders. Careful examination of the wrist rods show no evidence that muscles were attached, so the dinosaurs wouldn\\u2019t have been able to adjust the wings well enough to actually fly. Modern bats have lots of tiny muscles in their wing membranes to help them fly.\\nYi qi\\u2019s wrist rod isn\\u2019t unique in the animal world. The flying squirrel has styliform rods made of cartilage that project from the wrists, with the patagia attached to them. When a squirrel wants to glide, it extends its arms and legs and also extends the wrist rods, stretching the patagia taut. It can even control its glide to some extent by adjusting the wrist rods.\\nThese two bat-winged dinosaurs were related,"