Bats are birds. Just not our kind of bird.

I agree with Brian here. It is not a semantic nonsense. I got his point. I would also point out that LAMARK was unable to put birds and mamamals on a line from progenitors"" that he terminated monotremes with birds and and mammals on the other side of the rest reptiles etc. If the lateral non-progressive progress of any cell death no matter the level of selection could indicate no matter the analogy the bats as we know them today be lateralled to the other side of Lamarks graph once modern issues of species selection stop being debated then it might be that bats are birds and we would have only a religous issue being discussed here instead.