Sperm whales are amazing divers (Scarred Giant by artist Chris Harman, click picture for reference)Whales are incredible creatures. They are perfectly designed for a life in the water, even though they breathe air. They can dive to depths that would kill human beings, because their ribcage and lungs are designed to change as they dive deeper. This allows the whales to adapt to water pressures that are simply incredible. Sperm whales, for example, can dive more than a mile underwater.1 At that depth, the pressure the whale experiences is well over 150 times atmospheric pressure!
Many whales have an intricate method of communication that allows them to be highly social. Most social mammals rely on visual cues for communication, but because the water they live in inhibits the effectiveness of visual cues, whales mostly communicate with vocalizations. Dolphins, for example communicate with clicks, whistles, and other sounds. A few years ago, researchers learned that dolphins use their whistles to identify other dolphins by name. Two dolphins that are “talking” might even refer to a third dolphin by name as a part of their “conversation”!2
Well, it seems there is another thing to add to the ever-growing list of what makes whales so amazing: they also have great poop!
Evolutionists have always wanted a “simple” life form to exist. After all, to make the leap from nonliving chemicals to living systems, there must be something that is alive in every sense of the word, but at the same time, is reasonably simple. For a long time, evolutionists wanted bacteria to represent that “simple” life form.
As I make clear in my biology textbook, however, there is no such thing as a simple life form, and that holds true for bacteria as well. The more we learn about them, the more we learn how complex they really are. One of the surprises that has emerged in the past few decades is that bacteria actually talk to one another. They have an incredibly complex means of communication, but Dr. Bonnie Bassler (a professor at Princeton University) does an excellent job of describing it in the following video:
Even though it is 18 minutes long, it is worth watching. She not only tells you how important bacteria are to nature and to you, she explains bacterial communication in a very easy-to-understand manner.
What I find interesting about it is how she and I take such a different view of what the data really mean. She says that because we now know bacteria have one language to talk to other members of their own species and a second language to talk to the bacterial community as a whole, it is clear that bacteria really “set up the rules” for communication between cells. Thus, the communication that makes your cells able to work together so that you survive is simply a more advanced version of what bacteria were able to evolve billions of year ago. I look at the same data, however, and see incredible evidence for design. Just as a common genetic code tells us there is a common designer for creation, the fact that cellular communication is common amongst all the cells in creation tells us that cellular communication is the result of a preplanned design.
Regardless of how you look at what these data mean, the facts are amazing, and Dr. Bassler does an excellent job of communicating them!
These calves are identical twins
(Image in the public domain)It is commonly assumed (quite incorrectly) that an organism’s genetics determine pretty much everything there is to know about the organism. For example, many people think that because identical twins have identical genes, they are nearly identical. Of course, ask a few identical twins whether or not they are identical people, and you will soon find out how naive a view that really is. Indeed, even something as straightforward as fingerprints are not identical between identical twins. If fingerprints are not even identical between those who have identical DNA, it is likely that very few traits are governed solely by genetics. Thus, there is clearly an interaction between an organism’s genetics and its surroundings. Genetics might give you a predisposition for some traits, but your environment will play a role in whether or not that predisposition is actually followed.
However, what if there is something more than genetics and environment? Could there be something else that affects an organism’s traits? Vicki R. Nelson and her colleagues decided to investigate this question in a rather elegant way, and the results they obtained were rather surprising.
This little ant scares elephants! (Image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acacia_collinsii3.jpg)Proverbs 6:6 tells us, “Go to the ant, O sluggard, Observe her ways and be wise.” As this verse suggests, scientists who have studied the ant have learned all sorts of wonderful things. I mentioned previously the remarkable mutualistic relationship between Crematogaster (also called Cregaster) ants and certain Acacia trees. The trees provide food and housing for the ants, and the ants fiercely attack anything that tries to eat their tree. As I discussed in a follow-up post, scientists who thought they would “help” Acacia trees by fencing them in to protect them from large herbivores like elephants actually ended up hurting the trees. In the end, the scientists could not improve on the protection that the ants provide the tree naturally.
This intrigued the scientists who were bested by the ants, so they wanted to find out whether or not it is really possible for the tiny Crematogaster ants to actually defend the tree from the world’s largest land animal. Thus, they conducted a follow-up study, and the results were incredible!
Suppose you wanted to get video from outer space, but you didn’t want to spend a whole lot of money. What would you do? For the cost of an iPhone (which was recovered), an HD video camera (also recovered), a parachute, some Styrofoam, tape, handwarmers, weights, and a balloon, these guys did it!
Image from http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2008/02/theme-genomes-junk-dna.html
The evolutionary mindset produces all sorts of pathologies in modern science, but it has probably wreaked the most havoc in the field of genetics. Because DNA is so incredibly well designed, assuming that it is the result of random processes guided by natural selection has hampered our understanding of it significantly. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the concept of junk DNA. The term was coined by Susumu Ohno back in 1972.1 He applied it to all parts of an organism’s DNA that don’t code for proteins. Back then, it was thought that DNA’s only job was to tell a cell which proteins to make and how to make them. If a portion of DNA didn’t do that, to Ohno and most other geneticists at the time, it was simply junk – a leftover vestige of the evolutionary process. To give you an idea of how unreasonable this evolution-inspired idea is, at one time, it was thought that more than 98% of the human genome was composed of junk DNA!
Of course, creationists have always contended that there cannot be much junk DNA in any organism’s genome. Because DNA is so incredibly well designed, any significant amount of junk DNA would cause all sorts of problems. Imagine throwing a bunch of junk into a race car engine. Do you think the engine would work properly if it was filled with junk? Of course not. Since DNA is designed more elegantly than the fastest race car engine today, it is hard to believe it could function properly if it were filled with junk. The creationist view, then, has always been that while there might be a bit of junk DNA that has come from mutations which have degraded the genome over time, the vast majority of all organisms’ DNA serves important purposes, whether or not we understand them.
Not surprisingly, the more we learn about DNA, the more the creationist view is being confirmed. Time and time, again regions of DNA that have been positively identified as “junk” by evolutionists have been demonstrated to have a necessary function. A recent article in the journal Nature is yet another example of this confirmation process.
I know…I know…I used “amazing” in my previous post. However, just as “amazing” is the best adjective to describe bowerbirds, it is also the best adjective to describe this fish. Let’s start with why it’s called the archerfish. It likes to eat insects, but rather than waiting for insects to fall into the water, it knocks them into the water by shooting them with a stream of water. You can see the amazing archerfish in action by watching the following video:
As the video tells you, the archerfish understands that gravity will cause the stream of water to follow a curved path, so it adjusts its aim accordingly. In addition, it compensates for the fact that light bends when it travels from air into water. This causes the target to appear at a different place than where it actually is. Nevertheless, the archerfish isn’t fooled by the optical illusion. It aims its jet of water where the insect actually is, not where it appears to be. If all of that isn’t amazing enough, wait until you read what some recent research has uncovered.
A Bower Built By a Bird (image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bowerbird_bower4.jpg)
Bowerbirds are incredible. They have a complex courting ritual in which the male builds a bower (such as the one pictured above) in order to attract a mate. The bower is often quite elaborate, and it is usually decorated with all manner of objects, such as flowers, shells, stones, feathers, and small fruits. Male bowerbirds will even include human-made objects like bottlecaps, coins, and pieces of glass in their decor. Females that are interested in the bower will watch the male put on his courtship display in the “court” of his bower, and she will also inspect details of the bower to determine whether or not the male is worthy of her. If she mates with the male, she will not use the bower as a nest. Instead, she will build her own nest to hatch and raise her young. Thus, the only purpose of the bower is for the male to attract a mate.
If the picture above doesn’t impress you with regard to the male bowerbird’s artistic prowess, consider this: In 1872, naturalist Odoardo Beccari was the first to record observations of a bowerbird’s bower. He thought it was made by a person, because he considered it too artistic and elaborate to be the work of an animal.1 Not surprisingly, as biologists have studied bowerbirds in more detail, they have become even more impressed with the artistic prowess of this amazing animal.
Tugboats fight the flames on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
(Image in the public domain.)The disaster at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was horrendous. Let’s make no mistake about that. Because not enough attention was paid to safety and environmental concerns before the explosion, an estimated total of 4.9 million barrels of oil (210 million gallons)1 were dumped into the ocean. The oil killed wildlife and will probably negatively affect parts of the environment for years to come. With that said, however, I want to look at the disaster from a scientific perspective. If nothing else, such a perspective will give you a deeper appreciation for the wonderful creation God has given us.
The first thing you need to realize is how much oil seeps into the Gulf of Mexico naturally. Probably the best estimate done to date was published by the National Academies Press. It indicates that about 140,000 tons of oil (about a million barrels) leak into the Gulf of Mexico each year due to natural oil seeps.2 So the Deepwater Horizon disaster dumped as much oil as 5 years’ worth of natural seepage.
Now, of course, there are some big differences between the way the Deepwater Horizon disaster spilled oil into the gulf and the way the natural seeps do it. First, the natural seeps release oil into the gulf much more slowly. Second, they release oil into the gulf over a wider area so it is not as concentrated. Third, since no one is trying to stop them, there isn’t all the pollution associated with engineers doing everything they can to stop a leak. As a result, the natural oil seeps do not produce the environmental devastation that the Deepwater Horizon disaster did.
However, because oil seeps naturally into the ocean, you would expect that the ocean has a way to deal with it, and indeed it does. What we have seen already as a result of the Deepwater Horizon disaster tells us just how well the oceans have been designed to deal with oil pollution.
One of the fundamental ideas behind the evolutionary hypothesis is that organisms fall in a range from “simple” to “complex.” The organisms that are supposed to be simple, like bacteria, are assumed to be more reflective of the kinds of organisms that existed on earth a few billion years ago. As the evolutionist waves the magic wand of time, it is assumed that those “simple” organisms slowly evolved into “complex” organisms. What we see on earth today, then, is a range of complexity in nature. “Simple” organisms (like bacteria) are reminiscent of the first kinds of organisms that existed on earth, and “complex” organisms (like mammals) are the products of the long, slow process of macroevolution.
Of course, this goes counter to the creationist view. In the creationist view, organisms do not fall in a range from “simple” to “complex.” Instead, as my coauthor and I stress throughout our biology book, there is no such thing as a simple organism. Even organisms like bacteria are marvelously complex. Thus, if there is a range of complexity in creation, it is from “really complex” to “ridiculously complex.”
The more we learn about science, the more it confirms the creationist view of complexity. Organisms that evolutionists call “simple” are actually amazingly complex.
