Most of us have seen flamingos or at least pictures of them. Their bright pink plumage is hard to miss, and it is quite a sight when they travel in groups. We also may have marveled at a bird that eats with its head upside down. Even more remarkable is the fact that flamingos sleep standing on one leg. Because they retract the other leg into their body, people assumed that the one-legged stance was to conserve body heat. However, researchers investigating this odd behavior have found that it is both an energy-saving and safety design.
A flamingo’s knee is located close to its body. The joint you may have thought was the knees is actually the ankle. Researchers found that flamingos can lock their knee and stabilize their center of gravity over one leg. When flamingos sleep standing on one leg, they are very stable. When asleep, their swaying decreases sevenfold compared to when they are awake. They have virtually no muscle movements in their legs and feet while they sleep. In fact, dead flamingos are capable of standing on one leg when placed in a vertical position.
Roosting is one of the most dangerous times for any bird because predators can sneak up on them. However, Flamingos can roost while standing in water away from the shore, significantly reducing their risk of being eaten. The design of their legs and knees allows this unusual method of survival.
God has provided special equipment for survival to all living things. We cannot see the unique characteristics of flamingos as accidental mutations. God’s design is incredible and allows the great diversity we see in life on Earth.
An environmental design feature we often overlook is the need to control insect populations. Insects do many good things, but if their numbers are not controlled, they can wipe out other forms of life – especially plants. Sand scorpions help control insects in the Mohave Desert using a method similar to how geologists locate earthquake epicenters.
Earthquakes generate longitudinal and transverse waves. Longitudinal waves travel faster. Close to the earthquake epicenters, the two wave types arrive at about the same time, but farther from the epicenter, the time difference becomes greater. Geologists can accurately compute the earthquake’s epicenter by measuring the difference at various locations.
Sand scorpions use a similar technique to locate their prey. The scorpion has eight legs that can detect vibrations of one angstrom (which is the size of a hydrogen atom). An insect traveling either under the surface or on the surface of the ground creates tiny vibrations. The scorpion detects the direction of the prey by comparing when its legs receive the signal from the prey’s movement. Legs closer to the prey detect the signal before legs further away, and the time difference between the two types of waves is a few microseconds.
By comparing the time difference, the scorpion can compute the distance and direction to the prey. The scorpion then moves in that direction and stops at the distance indicated by the arrival times of the vibrations. It then stabs with its pincers at that point and gets its meal without seeing its prey.
Using a method similar to the way geologists locate earthquake epicenters, sand scorpions, hunting primarily at night, can control insect populations in the Mohave Desert. The many ways the natural system maintains balance is an excellent testimony for design. The creation is not an accident but the product of a Supreme Intelligence that has built these systems into our world.
Reference: Halliday, Resnick, and Walker Fundamentals of Physics 6th edition in the “Waves” chapter, and a research report by Dr. Bijan Nemati at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.
Some say that the human body is no different from the bodies of other mammals, and in some senses, that is true. We all have hearts, stomachs, livers, etc., and our body chemistry is pretty much the same. If that were not true, we would be unable to eat meat or maintain a body temperature different from our environment. Still, despite these similarities, there are huge differences between human metabolism and the way we produce the food energy our bodies use.
For our body size, humans consume more calories each day than any other mammal. Evolutionists attempt to relate humans to chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, but the way humans handle food energy is radically different from the apes. When a baby human is born, its metabolism is very similar to an adult human, but it skyrockets over the first year of life. By the first birthday, toddlers burn over 50% more energy than we would expect for their size. Much of this consumption is to develop the brain. Throughout childhood, human metabolism will decline, reaching adult levels at around age 20, with boys declining more slowly than girls. After that, the energy expenditure is steady from age 20 until about age 60, and then it declines again.
Chimps, gorillas, and orangutans foraging for food can obtain between 200 and 300 k/cal each hour. At that rate, it takes apes about seven hours of foraging to get the k/cal they need for the day. Human metabolism requires more k/cal per day – around 2000 for women and 2500 for men, depending on body mass, activity, and age. Human hunter-gatherers can easily bring in 3000 to 5000 food k/cal per hour. Farmers produce much more than that. Until the middle 1800s, more than half of America’s workforce were farmers. Since humans have not had to spend so many hours obtaining food, we have time to devote ourselves to science, medicine, teaching, and the arts.
Human efficiency of food production allows children the freedom to grow and learn without spending every waking hour finding food. The problem we have involves food distribution and food waste. Our bodies are amazing machines of human metabolism. Herman Pontzer of the Duke Global Health Institute wrote, “The human body is a wonder of coordinated chaos. Every second of every day, each of your 37 trillion cells is hard at work, pulling in nutrients, building new proteins, and doing the myriad of other tasks that keep you alive.”
The human body is uniquely designed to serve others and serve God. That fact led the Psalmist to write, “I will praise you, God, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I know that full well” (Psalms 139:14). It also speaks to the value of human life and the importance of living as God has called us to live.
One of the most compelling examples of design in natural things is a frog that escapes predators by making itself practically invisible. During the day, glass frogs (Hyalinobatrachium Fleischmanni) can be up to 61% transparent while sleeping on green leaves in their native Central and South America. At night, they regain their color and become active. Medical researchers want to know how they do this because it might give a clue about how to avoid blood clotting in humans.
Somehow, glass frogs separate their red blood cells from the blood plasma. The plasma is still circulating, and if you look closely, you can see the heart beating. But the red blood cells are temporarily stored in the liver, making the frog transparent enough to avoid notice by predators. When the frog becomes active, its color returns, and, like most frogs, it can evade predators.
Jesse Delia, a researcher at the Museum of Natural History in New York, and Carlos Taboada of Duke University have used ultrasound imaging technology to understand what the glass frogs are doing. They found that the frogs store their red blood cells in the liver, enlarging it by 40%.
The challenges the glass frogs are able to overcome include having little or no oxygen while avoiding blood clotting. That is what the medical researchers want to understand because the application to anti-blood-clotting medications could be significant.
God has built many techniques for survival into living things, and this is one of the most interesting. We continue to learn from the things God has made.
Not all spiderwebs are the same. The web shape and use are different from one spider species to another. However, scientists have identified more than 49,000 species, so spider webs have great diversity.
Araneidae spiders make a round web with a hub in the center and radii projecting outward with rings of sticky spirals surrounding it. Most people have seen those webs in their gardens or other outdoor locations. Spiders in the family Agelenidae build horizontal sheet webs that insects fall onto. The web is not sticky, but when an insect lands on the platform, the spider quickly rushes over and injects venom into the victim.
The Deinopis spiders are net-casters. They make a small square web and hide above it until an insect walks below. The spider drops the net on the unsuspecting prey and then wraps it in silk. One New Guinea spider species makes a long ladder web to capture moths. The moth’s protective coating falls off when sliding down the ladder, and then it gets stuck. In Australia, a species of orb-weaving spiders produce giant net-like webs up to three feet in diameter.
We can see that spiders have enormous diversity in their webs. Spider silk is very acidic, so fungi and bacteria can’t exist on it. Because of that, humans have used spider webs as a treatment for wounds. Medical research has also found uses for spider venom. Researchers estimate that spiders catch up to 800 million tons of insects every year worldwide. Without spiders, we might be overrun by insects.
We tend to have a negative view of spiders, but they are one of God’s great tools to protect us and help make the world a better place. Spiders are not aggressive toward humans, but they can inflict a painful and sometimes dangerous bite when we invade their spaces. Like many other things, we must learn how to manage spiders and their varied webs designed to remove the plague of insects from our lives.
Reference: The International Society of Arachnology in the Old Farmer’s Almanac 2023, pages 186-7.
We tend to ignore the hidden intelligence of design in the natural world. One great example is the wisdom of bird nests. We see that wisdom in a wide variety of bird nest designs in how and where they build and how they use them.
You may think that bird nests are where birds live, but that isn’t true. Birds do not sleep in their nests, and most birds never return to their nests once their young can fly. Instead, when it’s time to sleep, birds roost in safe, comfortable places. This may be a well-sheltered tree or a sheltered spot under an eave. Perching birds have locking tendons in their legs and feet so they can hold tight to branches, even when they are sleeping.
When building their nests, birds use ingenious ways to protect their eggs and baby birds. Two main techniques are camouflage and making nests hard to reach. For example, hummingbirds weave their nests with natural objects to blend in with tree branches. Cactus wrens build their nest in sharp-spined cholla cacti, which few predators can navigate. Birds use common materials such as lichens and leaf scraps held together with spider web threads that can stretch as the young grow.
Some birds set up decoys by building an empty dummy nest in addition to their real one. Flycatchers weave snakeskins into their nests to frighten away squirrels and other nest raiders. Seabirds lay pear-shaped eggs on cliffs beyond where predators can climb. The shape of the eggs keeps them from rolling off the cliff. Some birds will nest within a wing’s reach of each other, so there are many defenders against an approaching predator.
Small birds sometimes build their nests near large birds for protection. Sparrows and hummingbirds nest within an abandoned eagle’s nest or Cooper’s hawk nest. Snow geese nest near a snowy owl’s nest. Egrets and herons nest above alligator ponds to keep raccoons away. Some wading birds fake an “incubation pose” to decoy predators from their actual nest location.
Other bird nest designs include a floating nest of aquatic vegetation that moves with changing water levels. The decaying vegetation also generates warmth to help incubate the eggs. Canadian jays situate their nests, so they have southern exposure to give them extra heat. All birds line their nests with their own feathers so the featherless baby birds can stay warm. Some species will even pull fur from dogs and other animals to line their nests for warmth.
Bird nest designs take advantage of many locations to give their babies a chance to survive. For example, Wrens, barn swallows, purple martins, and house finches use locations that include human structures, such as highway overpasses, abandoned cars, skyscraper ledges, and traffic lights.
Observing the many bird nest designs is a great way to see the wisdom and design God gave them. In Job 39, God challenges Job to explain how various birds do what they do. Job responds by saying, “Who is he that gives counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered things that I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know about” (Job 42:3). The natural world displays so much design and wisdom that we need to have that same attitude.
If you have watched Arctic nature documentaries, you may have noticed that polar bears pursuing their prey can travel at impressive speeds and make rapid turns on snow and ice. A recent study of polar bear paws comparing them to brown bears, American black bears, and sun bears reveals how they can stop quickly on the ice.
Polar bears have more foot fur and smaller paw pads than other bears. The paw pads have microscopic bumps called papillae which are as much as 1.5 times longer than those of other bears. Friction experiments show that the taller papillae increase the surface area in contact with the ground giving more traction on slippery surfaces. The smaller size also reduces heat loss through the paws. When we were in Alaska, I learned that native Americans living there for generations could tell the color of the bear by looking at its paw prints in the snow or mud.
The polar bear is not just a brown bear with a white coat. There are design features in polar bears that equip them to live in an ice and snow environment. The design of polar bear paws is only one of the features allowing them to survive in an environment where no other bear could. Sun bears don’t have papillae at all because they would be useless in the bears’ tropical habitat.
The more we study the design of animals, the more examples we see of specialized equipment enabling life to survive everywhere on Earth. These examples remind us that “we can know there is a God through the things He has made” (Romans 1:20).
You may be surprised to know that the total biomass of bacteria in the ground is 1000 times more than the mass of humans. Mass is the total number of molecules present, and we usually measure it by weight, which is the pull of gravity on the molecules. For example, the mass of living things in the ocean equals 100 times the mass of all humans on planet Earth. In other words, if you totaled the quantity of matter in whales, fish, corals, clams, etc., you would have 100 times more molecules than in all living humans. If you counted the number of individual life forms in the oceans, the ratio would be even greater than 100-to-one, but that is quantity, and we are talking about global biomass.
Not only is the mass of underground bacteria greater than that of humans, but even worms have three times our mass. Even more surprising, the mass of viruses on Earth exceeds human mass by more than three times, and the global biomass of all bacteria is more than 1100 times that of all humans. There are some important messages in these numbers. One is that we must understand that we can’t eliminate viruses or bacteria in the world. Furthermore, we wouldn’t want to. Bacteria and viruses are essential in sustaining all other forms of life.
Another thing we need to consider is that humans keep (as livestock, poultry, and pets) a third of all mammal biomass on the planet and two-thirds of all bird mass. In Genesis 1:28, God gave humans the responsibility of managing all living things. We are now beginning to understand the importance of the conservation and management of life on our planet.
The global biomass of plants is another area where we have had a poor understanding. The mass of all plants is 7500 times greater than human mass, and like bacteria and viruses, plants are essential to life on our planet. Human destruction of forests worldwide and the replacement of vegetation with concrete are major factors in pollution and climate change.
The Genesis account says, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth, and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food” (Genesis 1:29-30). Earth’s design is no accident. The role of plants, bacteria, worms, viruses, and all life is a product of an infinitely intelligent and understanding mind.
The dictionary definition of “science” is “knowledge,” and it can never conflict with the mind that created all we see and are. When God challenges us to consider the wisdom in the creation, the human response is like Job’s, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:3). We know a lot more than Job did, but, like him, there is much we don’t know.
Acrocanthosaurus Tracks in Glen Rose, TexasAcrocanthosaurus
For many years, various religious sources have claimed that dinosaur tracks and human tracks exist in the same rock strata in Glen Rose, Texas. We have visited the site several times and have published articles on the tracks. Our studies were not just at Dinosaur Valley State Park, operated by the state of Texas, but also at Jake McFall’s ranch, where the original film “Footprints in Stone” was made fifty-plus years ago. The dinosaur tracks are very clear, but the human tracks are what today we would call “fake news.”
The area near Glen Rose, Texas, has been in a drought, and some of the Paluxy River dried up, exposing the new tracks. There are now five dinosaur track sites in the park. The tracks show the depth that the animal’s feet sank into the mud, which was part of a beach area in the dinosaur age. The depth of the tracks and how far they are separated from each other suggest that the animal was bipedal and very large. Researchers say that the dinosaur was an Acrocanthosaurus.
Some have claimed there are dinosaur tracks and human tracks in the same rock layer, attempting to prove that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time. However, the claimed human tracks are impressions in mud that were altered by the river and then painted by those who claim they are valid. They also sink the same depth into the ground, suggesting that the “humans” were the same weight as the dinosaur, which is impossible. Furthermore, researchers have found no human tracks anywhere in the same rock layer as dinosaur tracks.
We have suggested that dinosaurs were part of Genesis 1:1 and God used them to prepare the resources humans would need. Dinosaurs are not described in the Bible because the ancient Hebrews could not have comprehended their existence. People who believe the Bible must be careful not to employ the same fake news techniques frequently used in politics. Claiming that dinosaur tracks and human tracks prove that they lived simultaneously is a dispensational denominational religious view the Bible does not teach.
God’s word is true, but we must rely on valid evidence as we seek to support it as a guide to understanding history and knowing how to live our lives.
We are entering an interesting time of change for living plants and animals on planet Earth. We are in a period of rapid climate change, and for many living things, survival requires change. However, for some life forms, this is not an issue. For example, omnivores, animals that eat a wide variety of foods, can change their diet to whatever is available. For example, bears in Alaska eat salmon, but if that is not available, they eat insects, nuts, plants, rodents, and marine shore life such as clams.
For other animals, the situation is much more complicated. For example, giant pandas rely on bamboo for food. Not only is their digestive system designed to eat only bamboo, but even their hands and fingers are designed to modify the bamboo so they can eat it. Polar bears rely on ice flows to get the seals that make up most of their diet. With much of the ice in polar areas melting, the bears cannot secure food, and starvation threatens many of them.
Survival requires change, and for some animals, that means migrating to a different place where they can find their dietary needs. As the oceans warm, cold-water fish migrate to northern areas. Some corals are establishing new colonies in different places as conditions where they have lived for centuries no longer meet their needs. On the other hand, animals with specialized equipment, such as pandas, will face extinction. Humans can step in with temporary solutions, but eventually, some forms of life will cease to exist. That is not necessarily a bad thing.
The fossil record shows us that survival requires change. A significant change in the climate caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. However, that eventually provided a climate and atmosphere where humans and the animals we depend on could thrive. Asteroid material did not directly destroy the dinosaurs, but the asteroid collision changed the climate. That change produced an environment in which dinosaurs could not survive, but it led to the formation of a climate ideal for humans.
Genesis 1:2 is an interesting passage. A possible translation of the verse is, “And the earth became wasted and emptied, and darkness was upon the face of the deep place.” That would indicate a change in Earth’s condition. God has used such changes to accomplish His will. The flood of Noah was not primarily an environmental act but a response by God to the sinfulness of humans at that time. Climatic change is another tool God has used in the past. In geologic time, there have been periods of hot and cold, and survival requires change. The current change in Earth’s climate is not solely caused by humans. We may contribute to the process, but humans are not the sole cause.
God’s creative processes don’t involve “magic tricks.” Instead, God uses natural methods to shape and mold planet Earth. Some animals, such as dinosaurs, have played essential roles in contributing to the resources that humans would need. When they had completed their mission, a change brought about their extinction. The Bible doesn’t tell us how God did what He did, but the more we study the creation, the more we understand some of His processes. Climate change has been one of them and may be so again.
