Bearing in mind the extent of bio-diversity on our planet, is it not surprising that nothing exists solely within the atmosphere that surrounds us?
I’m betting there’s some bacteriums/viruses that might live their entire life without touching the ground, but for anything bigger than that we have that annoying thing called gravity that we have to deal with.
I’m sure some molecular biologist will be along shortly to share some interesting bit about this.
Birds, on the other hand, do occupy our atmosphere, but birds also need sleep/rest, so they have to touch the ground at least occassionally. Sure there’s some birds that spend a great majority of their life in the air (Hummingbirds or migratory birds like the Artic Tern ), but all of them eventually need to at least lay eggs. Laying eggs without touching the ground sounds like an idea evolution would allow to happen. 
You would need some way for such animals to remain buoyant, perhaps bladders filled with lighter-than-air gas, and you would need a sustained food source. These seem to be difficult conditions to meet.
Laying eggs without touching the ground doesn’t sound like an idea evolution would allow to happen. :smack:
Probably because the air doesn’t contain enough food or nutrients to make such a strategy feasible.
One might imagine some kind of buoyant photosynthetic plankton producing food from sunlight, either so small it remains aloft indefinitely due to air currents or by producing lighter than air gas, but such organisms would need at least some minerals in order to manufacture chlorophyll and other necessary components. And there probably aren’t enough dust particles floating around to provide this.
There is a kind of aerial “plankton” of sorts in the form of very small insects that are wafted aloft, but of course they got their food originally from the ground.
Swifts come pretty close to being completely aerial, copulating and even sleeping on the wing, but they haven’t figured out a way to lay their eggs in air.
Why does the pudding bird lay its eggs in mid-air?
It’s “Why does the Porridge Bird lay his eggs in the air?”
Bozo.
Microbes from edge of space grown in the lab
Naturally, there’s argument over whether they live up there, just got blown beyond the tropopause by volcanoes, etc., or came from space.
now don’t be so pessimistic! Given a short enough incubation period and a very short helpless baby phase, it could happen… 
I’d think water would be even more limiting than minerals (in the sense that one thing can be ‘more impossible’ than another).
That would be the most awesome thing you ever saw through binoculars.
Second only to Ruthie, the superhot girl three doors down when I was growing up.
A completely aerial organism might be able to direct its flight under rain clouds, or harvest water droplets from clouds themselves. Water is a lot more prevalent in the atmosphere than minerals.
Has this been thoroughly debunked yet?
“Rods” at the Cave Of Swallows
I read Cecil’s link here, but it doesn’t seem to account for what is seen in that vid clip. Those long “things” are definitely not “artefacts” from where I am sat.
‘Rods’ have certainly been debunked as far they can be - which is to say, completely - except for those people who would never be convinced by any amount of evidence.
They’re not ‘long things’ - they only appear that way because they move within the finite exposure time of each frame. The phenomenon has not only been adequately explained, it’s also been copiously reproduced with organisms known not to be ‘rods’ appearing as rods on the footage.
Huh? They look 'exactly" like artifacts. An elongated strobe image of an insect stretched across the scene as it moves. Or perhaps there is a 4 foot long insect with tiny rippling helix like wings that enable it to fly at significant speeds.
Okay, how about the bit where they are seen alongside fluttering swallows? They look far too big to be insects, and why aren’t all the other swallows images distorting, if they are being filmed at the same speed?
added the underlined bit, if it’s any help?
Somebody theorized that the atmosphere of jupiter might be home to creatures which were gas-filled balloons. could something like tis evolve? i recall that certain seaweeds have bladders filled with hydrogen gas.
The insect is going at one speed. The swallow is going at another. The insect’s wings are beating at some ungodly fast speed, numerous times a second. The swallow’s wings are pumping maybe once a second at the fastest they go. The insect is pumping so fast the video speed can’t flip though fast enough. It captures the insect multiple times per frame, with 3-four seperate wing beats on that capture.
More to the point, take a closer look there. The insect is hardly more than a blurry streak, but its wing patterns are absolutely regular. They are clearly a video artifact. The reason the people filming and jumping saw nothing was because they saw only bugs and birds. And the camera did in fact capture that on film.
I don’t know. That spooky music convinces me that they are mysterious unknown creatures. 