Animals Archives

October 12, 2020October 11, 2020

Relationship Between Fruits and Birds

There is an essential relationship between fruits and birds. We all know that birds eat fruits, but we may not be aware of the system’s complexity and how it varies from place to place.

Here in Michigan, we struggle with poison ivy, and I am very sensitive to it. When I moved into my present house, the property was covered with a great deal of poison ivy. I spent most of our first summer eradicating it. The following spring, I found new poison ivy plants coming up in places where there were none the year before. One of my biology teacher friends informed me that birds eat the berries of poison ivy, and they plant many of the seeds resulting in a new crop. That makes it hard to eradicate.

An August 17, 2020, report by the National Science Foundation told about a study of an evergreen shrub found in the U.K. and most of Europe. This plant, called Viburnum tinus, stores fat in the cells of its fruit, making it an ideal food for birds’ survival success. The fruit also contains a large number of seeds. The fat, or lipids, in the fruit’s cells, give it structural color, making it a very bright blue. Structural color is not made from pigments, but it is produced by internal cell structures interacting with light. The feathers of many birds, including peacocks, and the wings of butterflies have structural color, but it is very rare in plants.

Miranda Sinnot-Armstrong of Yale University says that they used electron microscopy to study the Viburnum tinus fruits’ cell walls. She said they “found a structure unlike anything we’d ever seen before: layer after layer of small lipid droplets.” Because of the lipids, these plants supply the fats that birds need. Their shiny metallic color signals the birds to lead them to this nutritive source.

The more we study the natural world around us, the more we see incredibly complex structures to allow life to exist. This is not an accident but a complex set of systems to provide diversity in the natural world. The relationship between fruits and birds is designed to give the birds a way to find nourishment and to support their food sources in a symbiotic relationship. It’s another example of God’s design for life.

October 2, 2020October 1, 2020

Recycling Enables the Natural Beauty

I have lived my entire life in the woodlands of North America. I love walking through the vast areas of pines, birches, maples, oaks, blueberries, ferns, mosses, aspens, and raspberries. To me, it is pure joy to sit in the woods or in a boat on a lake or river and listen to the sounds of nature. I especially enjoy the fall when the colors become vivid, and animal life is in a rush to prepare for winter. The falling of leaves to the ground, followed by frost and snow, adds its own magic to the joy of being in the woods. Recycling enables the natural beauty we enjoy.

What we are seldom aware of is the massive amounts of waste produced in the woods. We all know about leaves and probably have had some cruel words about them when they cover our lawns. The fact is that a constant rain of organic material falls to the floor of the woods. Limbs, bark, twigs, dead grass, moss, sawdust, animal excrement, and carcasses pile up year after year. Yet when you walk in the woods, the floor is made up of a thin, spongy layer of black soil. What happens to the massive amount of debris that falls to the forest floor every year?

The answer to this question is under-appreciated by most of us. Recycling enables the natural beauty of the woods. God has built into the forest an incredibly efficient recycling system. When something organic falls to the forest floor, it is swarmed on by bacteria, termites, ants, fungi, and worms, which form the basis of the food chain for higher forms of life. Nutrients in the woods seldom last longer than a few weeks at the most. Rain is moderate and percolates through these nutrients, rapidly helping them find their way back into the forest’s living tissues.

Those places where there are not dense forests have a completely different system of recycling. In the far north, where forests are not dominant, migrating salmon provide the ecological balance needed. In desert areas, the lack of ecological balance means that life for humans is difficult at best. Human survival depends on God’s recycling system. In some areas of the rich farmlands of America, we can measure the soil in feet. That allows us to grow our grain crops that sustain our existence, but those areas were built in an ancient forest.

God told us to take care of what He gave us. (See Genesis 2:15.) One part of caring for the Earth is to copy God’s recycling techniques. Recycling enables the natural beauty by replenishing the nutrients we take from the soil rather than polluting the air by burning them or polluting the ground by bagging in plastic and burying them.

October 1, 2020October 17, 2021

Flash-Frozen Extinct Species

One of the weaknesses of evolution’s explanation of the origin of all living things is that it is built on an assumption called uniformitarianism. The idea is that “the present is the key to the past” meaning that no process operated in the past that is not going on today. If there have been global catastrophes wiping out most living creatures, then the theories of gradualism have a problem with explaining life’s origins. Flash-frozen extinct species indicate global catastrophes.

Many years ago, we reported on the 1979 find of an extinct steppe bison mummy near Fairbanks, Alaska. The perfectly preserved corpse had been frozen for thousands of years. The gold miner who discovered the mummy called it “Blue Babe” after the mythical Paul Bunyon’s ox. That was because exposure to air caused it to turn blue due to iron phosphate. Blue Babe (pictured) is now on display at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

As the permafrost melts in Arctic areas, people are finding more frozen animals, including woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos. The latest one is a cave bear found on the Lyakhovsky Islands in Russia. Once again, the specimen is complete with all of the soft tissues intact.

These animals were preserved in a state we don’t see happening today. They seem to be flash-frozen, not just preserved by falling into a crevasse in a glacier. All of the animals found are extinct, but studies of their DNA and their preservation conditions are opening doors to the scientific research of the past.

As scientists find more flash-frozen extinct species, there will be revisions of theories about the history of life on Earth. One positive aspect of global warming is that it will expand our understanding of life in the past.

Reference: Smithsonianmag.com

September 28, 2020September 23, 2020

Birds Can Predict Typhoons

A recent report says that birds can predict typhoons. The Yamashina Institute for Ornithology published the results in Marine Biology, showing evidence that black-naped terns can predict typhoons and use that information to facilitate their migration.

Researchers attached tracking devices to the terns and studied how their migration departure varied with the presence of these huge storms. The birds would delay their departure when a massive typhoon was about to cross their projected path. Jean-Baptiste Thiebot, the lead author of the study, said, “They seem to be able to predict it.”

This ability gives the terns several advantages. Avoiding extreme winds and rain is a good thing. Besides that, the storms churn up food to the ocean surface allowing the terns to stop periodically to eat on their journey. In 2017, when there were no typhoons in the study area, the birds delayed their trip much later and flew the journey without a stop.

Scientists are still studying how these birds can predict typhoons. Some research suggests that they are equipped with infrasonic detectors that pick up weather signals. Researchers are also looking at the tern’s ability to recognize changing clouds.

In any case, it seems the birds are designed with an ability to use weather to facilitate their migration. Robert Gill, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, says, “They are able to predict better than the best weather forecasters we have.”

Reference: Scientific American, October 2020, page 24.

September 26, 2020September 23, 2020

Wildlife Trade and Health

One of the most destructive luxuries of many people is to take an animal from its wild environment and make it a household pet. Every year, 224 million live animals are imported into the United States. This is destructive in many ways. The Center for Biological Diversity, associated with the United Nations, reports that at the present rate of the wildlife trade, a million species are facing extinction in the wild.

Even more frightening is the fact that zoonotic transfer is now well understood. Zoonotic means that a disease has jumped from wildlife to people. We know that HIV, SARS, avian flu, and Ebola are all zoonotic. There is every indication that COVID-19 also originated in a live wildlife market in China. There is a great need to shut down the wildlife trade.

The idea of humans having animal pets is alien to the Bible. In the Garden of Eden, humans were gatherers using plant material for food. After Adam and Eve left the garden, people domesticated animals, and sheep became the primary source of clothing and meat. In Genesis 8 and 9, Noah brought the animals onto the ark for safety. While God allows us to use animals as food (Genesis 9:3), there is a clear understanding of the separation of wild animals and humans. “And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that lives on the earth and upon all the fishes of the sea…” (Genesis 9:2). The wildlife trade is foreign to the scriptures.

Humans domesticated certain animals for defensive reasons (like dogs), but the desire for “cuteness” is more a fixture of modern wealth than anything else. Very few of us buy live animals for food. You take a risk and responsibility in having any animal as a pet, but having a wild animal as a pet is inviting disaster in the form of disease.

Data from the fall 2020 issue of Nature’s Voice from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

September 22, 2020September 21, 2020

Mighty Mouse Drug May Help Space Travel

One of the problems with space travel is that the human body was designed to live on Earth. When people are in weightlessness for an extended time, they lose muscle and bone mass. This loss can be as much as 20%. A possible solution might be called the “mighty mouse drug.”

Dr. Se-Jin Lee of the Jackson Laboratory at the University of Connecticut has published findings of a drug that blocks a pair of proteins that typically limit muscle mass. When scientists treated mice with this drug, they maintained their weight and muscle mass even when they were in the International Space Station for a month.

The application of this research can do more than provide a way for humans to survive a trip to Mars. It may also benefit people who are confined to a bed or a wheelchair.

This research reminds us that God designed our bodies to function in Earth’s gravity, just as He designed Earth to support life. Problems occur when we subject our physical bodies to forces they were not designed for. These problems require extreme solutions, and God has given us the ability to use science to find solutions such as the mighty mouse drug.

Source: Associated Press 9/12/20, and Fierce Biotech.

September 10, 2020September 9, 2020

Mystery of Cicada Wings and Raindrops

We often see an animal or plant with remarkable abilities or properties that are not obvious how they work. One of those is the mystery of cicada wings and raindrops.

Scientists studying cicadas have noticed that their wings repel water and have antimicrobial properties. Every past attempt to understand how this works has destroyed the wing before finding the answer. However, it did appear that there were layers to the wing.

Scientific American (September 2020, page 21) describes a new method of analysis called microwave-assisted extraction. Using that method on cicada wings, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories peeled back the outer layer revealing a fantastic design.

Under the outer chemical layers, cicada wings have structures called nanopillars. When scientists removed the nanopillars’ chemical layers, they became shorter and bent towards each other, making the wing structure so close that water could not penetrate it. The chemical layers on top of the nanopillars kill microbes.

Marianne Alleyne, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was the study’s senior author. She said this knowledge will help scientists understand how to use chemicals and structure to engineer new products. “We can design new materials more rationally, making choices about the structure and chemistry based on what we have observed in nature,” Alleyne said. This is one more example of how science can copy nature to give us new products.

Romans 1:20 tells us that we can know there is a God through the things He has made. The mystery of cicada wings and raindrops is another example to verify that statement and show us ways to improve our lives here on Earth.

You can read more about the research project HERE.

September 6, 2020September 5, 2020

Why Do Birds Have Eyes?

Why do birds have eyes? That sounds like a silly question. Suppose you said, “So they can see,” you would be correct. But that’s not the only purpose for a bird’s eyes.

Bird’s eyes also serve to cool the bird’s body. People sweat, dogs pant, but birds have another cooling system. Flying is a high-energy activity, and it can raise a bird’s body temperature so much that the heat could damage its central nervous system. A bird’s eyes are designed to eliminate this problem.

As the wind rushes past the eyes of a flying bird, it evaporates water from the surface. This evaporation cools the blood in the nearby veins. The cooler blood prevents the temperature of the bird’s brain from going too high. Scientists proved this by putting hoods over the heads of some birds. If the eyes were covered, the brain temperature rose dramatically. If the eyes were uncovered, the brain temperature stayed constant.

So now you know. If someone asks you, “why do birds have eyes,” you can tell them, “To keep their brains cool.” We see many other amazing designs in birds. (Why do they fly north in spring? Why don’t they have ears? Why do some birds stand on one leg?) The design we see in all of life truly shows the wisdom of God.

September 3, 2020August 29, 2020

Eating Dogs for Dinner

One of the issues that the COVID-19 pandemic has raised is the use of animals for food. People in many Asian countries eat animals that Americans would not think of using for food. An example is eating dogs for dinner.

Many years ago, while lecturing in London, a Chinese friend took me to an oriental restaurant for dinner. Since the menu was in Chinese, my host suggested that I let him order the meal. He said that he would get a variety of food so I could experience the diet of people who live in the area where he was born. I agreed but wrote down each item that was brought to me to sample.

When I got back to Indiana, I asked one of my students who spoke Chinese what I had eaten. He didn’t want to tell me. The first item was horse, the second was dog, and the third was cat. It was actually very good, but if he had told me that I was eating dog before it came to me on a plate, I am sure I would have balked at eating it.

The Week magazine (August 28, 2020, page 11) reported on eating dogs for dinner. The report says that the North Korean government is confiscating all pet dogs for use as food. Hungry North Koreans regard feeding a pet as wasteful, and the Communist government labels keeping a pet as a “bourgeois extravagance.” Authorities in North Korea are forcing households with pet dogs to surrender the animals for dog-meat distribution to restaurants and meat markets.

The COVID-19 issue originating in Chinese wet markets reminds us that what we eat can be an essential factor in human diseases. Knowing what dogs eat, where they go, and what their hygiene is like raises some serious concerns about what diseases they might carry. The Bible tells us to take care of our bodies as they are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16). Being careful about what we eat and how our food is handled and prepared should be part of caring for our bodies.

September 2, 2020August 29, 2020

Self-Destruction Defense

How can an ant defend against a predator by blowing itself up? The worker ants of a species (Camponotus saundersi) that lives in Malaysia and Brunei use self-destruction defense. Let me explain.

These ants have two glands filled with toxic glue running the length of their bodies. When the ant seems to be losing its battle with a predator, it makes the ultimate sacrifice. By violently contracting its abdominal muscles, the ant ruptures its body. The explosion scatters sticky poison in all directions disabling the predator.

How can that benefit the ant? Obviously, that ant dies, but its action spares the rest of the colony from the predator. Humans sometimes sacrifice their own lives to save others. But, unlike humans, ants are not conscious of the fact that they are sacrificing themselves for their colony. How can we explain this by natural selection? Self-sacrificing ants would not reproduce to pass on that trait to their descendants. It must have been designed into the ants by the Master Designer of life.

These ants practice self-destruction defense even though they don’t understand the concept of self-sacrifice. However, I believe their Creator does. It’s expressed beautifully in the Bible. (See John 15:13 and John 3:16.)