If birds hadn't had evolved do you think we would have planes today?

Tranes, maybe

Planes or plains?

Now my witty retort doesn’t make sense. He fixed the typo, can that previous comment be removed? I missed my opportunity.

there are still insects, perhaps our planes would be more insectoid in design.

All right. So you say that planes are created in the image of birds. Well. They certainly inspired design in the early days before we managed to actually fly, but we would still have planes today. They are built to utilize the laws of physics in order to fly, not to look like birds.

there are also bats, and gliding squirrels. all in all, there are enough alternatives to birds from which humans could have gotten the inspiration and general design from.

also birds didn’t evolve. they were popped into existence by god snipping his fingers :D

that’s ok @Les, i had seen it before it was fixed
your clever response wasn’t wasted lol.

@Les The topic still says plains so it still makes sense, Witty Man :)

@amoreno06 and oratio: Thanks! I figured even if the US Government isn’t going to use that image, someone should. ;-)

@ragingloli- And don’t forget Superman.

Um I really should have said any flying animal or insect, well it’s too late now.

@Myndecho No worries. Still an interesting idea to ponder. :) And my answer is this: Probably not. Birds and insects are where we got the inspiration, probably.

@DrasticDreamer

Not necessarily, Leonardo Davinci’s first “helicopter” design is not inspired by nature at all.

They’d figure it out with or without birds. The first time the wind wafted some leaves in the air someone would have said “I want some ‘o dat!.”
Physics would then dictate the correct shape.
Blimps came before planes and I don’t see many flying elephants in nature.

The concept of flying could be deduced from any object that “flies” on the wind, even including clouds, but also leaves, seeds, or flying fish. There are any number of ways to observe the wind picking something up and flinging it about.