bats Archives - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

November 7, 2024November 4, 2024

Blind Cave Fish Find Food

How is bat guano controlled in caves, and how do blind cave fish find food? Like all natural balances, there is a relationship between these two questions.

With vast numbers of bats in caves, over many years, their droppings could fill the caves if there were no natural ways to reduce the volume. Dr. Josh Gross at the University of Cincinnati has discovered that blind cave fish actually eat bat guano. It provides food for the fish, which would otherwise have nothing to eat.

What the fish get from the guano depends on what kind of bats live in the cave. Fruit bats will have some sugar in their guano, and bats that eat insects will have some protein in theirs. The next question is, how do the fish find the guano that will nourish them? The answer is that the fish have taste buds under their chin and on top of their heads.

The fish avoid destructive bacteria that might be in the guano because some of the taste buds can detect lactones in the bacteria that would taste bitter. These taste buds are called tuft cells, and in addition to harmful bacteria, they can detect dust mites and mold.

Everywhere we look in the natural world, even in the darkest caves, we see God’s design and handiwork, even in how blind cave fish find food. Romans 1:20, “We can know there is a God through the things He has made,” has special meaning when we see examples like this.

— John N. Clayton © 2024
References: “A Matter of Taste” in Scientific American for November 2024, page 16 and Nature Communications Biology

August 21, 2024August 20, 2024

Bats Are Unique in Several Ways

Bats are among the most amazing creatures. The August 2024 issue of National Geographic was devoted to exploring research into all that bats can do and how they do it. Bats are unique in several ways.

There are over 1400 species of bats, ranging in size from the bumblebee bat, which weighs less than an ounce, to the flying fox, a fruit bat with a wingspan of nearly six feet and weighing up to three pounds. One-fifth of all mammal species on Earth are bats, and bats do many things that benefit humans. They consume mosquitoes and agricultural pests and are primary pollinators for bananas, mangoes, avocados, and durians (an important Asian fruit).

Bat wings are made of skin stretched on light bones with many joints, with muscles embedded in the skin. By comparison, bird wings have three joints. Bat wings have vast numbers of tiny hairs that sense airflow. Attempting to develop a drone in such a small space has turned out to be incredibly difficult. The quadcopter drones in widespread use can’t rival the flight of a bat in dark places.

Bats are unique in their long life expectancy and disease resistance. They can live for decades and rarely get cancers. They carry several viruses but are not affected by them. Some researchers suggested that COVID-19 jumped from bats to humans. Research shows that as bats age, their DNA is repaired, and scientists are studying this repair and immune activity.

It is interesting that the Bible doesn’t say much about bats. In Leviticus and Deuteronomy, bats are among the flying creatures God told the Israelites not to eat, a point that has interesting connections to viruses they can carry. Bats are unique and a critical part of the ecosystem that God designed. The more we understand about them, the more we see the hand of God in their creation. These small creatures are essential to God’s ecosystem and to us.

Reference: National Geographic for August 2024, pages 16-49

June 6, 2023June 1, 2023

Convergent Evolution and Carcinization

When unrelated species of animals or plants have common features, evolutionary biologists call it “convergent evolution.” There are many examples, such as:
* Dolphins and bats use echolocation to find food.
* Titan arum and rafflesia plants use putrid odor to attract pollinators.
* Nightingales and humpback whales sing similar songs just for beauty.

Those are only a few of the vast number of examples that scientists explain as convergent evolution. You can probably think of others. For example, bats, birds, and insects all have wings, but they are not related. In addition, unrelated venomous or poisonous creatures often wear bright colors as a warning, for example, snakes, frogs, and insects. Usually, the convergent features of various animals and plants serve an obvious purpose for the species’ survival.

Perhaps the most repeated convergence appears in the crab-like body shape. A crab has a flat, rounded shell and a tail that tucks under its body. Evolutionary biologists say that body plan has “evolved” at least five times. Scientists even have a name for this phenomenon. They call it “carcinization,” but they can only guess why it happened.

The result of carcinization is that many unrelated crustaceans resemble crabs. As a result, we often call them crabs even though they are not true crabs. A familiar example is the so-called king crab. Crab-shaped animals come in a wide range of sizes and live in various habitats, from the oceans to the mountains. So, with these creatures living in diverse ecosystems, scientists have difficulty explaining why they evolved the same body plan. Some suggestions include the tucked-under tail providing greater safety from predators or the body shape allowing them to move sideways.

We have a suggestion of why the crab shape, or carcinization, shows up in so many different crustaceans. Rather than convergent evolution, the common traits can be explained by a common Creator. That would explain why these creatures have the DNA building blocks for crabbiness – oops, I mean crab body shape.

May 16, 2023May 15, 2023

Understanding Animal Communication

We all remember the movie about a man who could uniquely talk to animals. Reports tell us that portable sensors and artificial intelligence may make a form of human-animal communication possible. Unlike that movie and the work of Penny Patterson using sign language to communicate with Koko the gorilla, the research goal is understanding animal communication instead of expecting them to use human language. Researchers use digital bioacoustics to record the animals and artificial intelligence to interpret what they say.

So far, scientists have studied the communication of bats and bees. Using tiny digital bioacoustic recorders, researchers at Tel Aviv University have gathered bat communication at frequencies above the limit of human hearing, over 20,000 hertz. Computers lower the frequency and slow it down to make it audible to humans, and artificial intelligence compiles the data to make it intelligible. Gerry Carter at Ohio State University has determined that bats have individual names, or “signature calls.” They argue over food, and mother bats communicate with their babies.

Understanding animal communication can involve more than sounds. Dr. Tim Landgraf at Freie Universitat in Berlin has deciphered bee communication, which involves both sounds and body movement. He has decoded the signals which tell other bees where to find nectar or warn of danger. Landgraf even built a robot name RoboBee that can enter a hive and control what the bees do. For example, when he put nectar in a place where no honeybee had visited and then told the bees where the nectar was, they went there.

Helping animals avoid pollution and directing them to safe food sources are potential applications of this technology. It is essential to understand the big difference between communication and language. These examples and future research with animals involve communication. Language is far more than communication and deals with culture, morals, and symbolism. As this field of understanding grows, its uses will also increase, and ethical concerns will become apparent.

One has to wonder how Adam and Eve communicated in the garden. They certainly did not speak English. Bat communication is obviously different from bee communication. Understanding animal communication is challenging since every animal is different, but that shows another level of design that science is just now beginning to understand. The more we learn about the creation, the more we have to be amazed at the wisdom of the Creator.

Reference: “How Scientists are Using AI to Talk to Animals” in Scientific American for May 2023, pages 26-27.

April 5, 2023April 2, 2023

The Misunderstood Bats

What animals have been maligned and villainized the most by humanity, yet they are the unsung heroes of the animal kingdom? The Nature Conservancy and Bat Conservation International say the misunderstood bats fit that description. People think that bats hunt human victims and drink blood. On the contrary, Vampire bats do not go after human victims and are shy and gentle in behavior. They also only make up a tiny percentage of the total bat population.

Studies of the Bracken Cave bats in Texas show they eat 140 tons of flying beetles, winged ants, and moths every night, saving a billion dollars in crop damage. That is just in one area of Texas, but other bats eat their body weight in insects every night. Bats also are essential pollinators and disperse hundreds of seeds. Bats are vital to the balance of our natural world, and scientists studying bats tell us that they are declining in number. Can you imagine what life on Earth would be like if we eliminated the animals that eat insects?

As a teenager in southern Indiana, I was a spelunker – one who explores caves. The caves we explored had massive numbers of bats, and several times we were in the caves when the bats were flying out for their feeding binges. I never was bitten by a bat, and they used their echolocation to avoid us. When we found huge piles of bat guano, it never occurred to me that it all came from bugs they had eaten.

God has intelligently designed the systems of life on planet Earth, and we need to care for and protect them. When humans destroy animals such as the misunderstood bats, we invite disaster for our well-being.

Reference: The Nature Conservancy and Bat Conservation International research report released on March 3, 2023

October 17, 2018October 21, 2018

Can Design Have Multiple Purposes?

Firefly- Can Design Have Multiple Purposes?
Can design have multiple purposes? That is a question asked by some scientists in a study led by Jesse Barber of Boise (Idaho) State University. The specific design feature they studied is the flashing light of fireflies. Do they have more than one purpose for their flashes?

We always believed that a firefly flashes its light to attract mates. That is reasonable and true, but it is an oversimplification of what the flashing does. Many times living organisms have a warning system built into their design to let predators know they are not good to eat. Barber and his associates suggested that fireflies taste bad and that the flashing warns predators not to eat them.

To test this theory, the researchers put bats that had never been around fireflies into a cage with fireflies. The bats learned in two or three interactions that a flashing bug is not good to eat. Barber says the bats quickly did a routine of “catch, taste, drop.”

Barber’s team then painted the flashing end of some lightning bugs with two coats of black paint so the bats could not see the flashes. Bats faced with the painted fireflies took up to 45 minutes to learn not to try to eat them. It seems evident that the flashing of a lightning bug has more than one function.

Can design have multiple purposes? This study answers that question with a “Yes.” Designing a system that has multiple benefits is engineering at its best. God’s design in nature is amazing! The more we know of the creation, the closer we get to the Creator and the more we see His planning and design.
–John N. Clayton © 2018
This study was published in August 22 Science Advances which you can read HERE.
Science News reported on it in their September 29 issue (page 4) which is available online HERE.

April 13, 2017October 6, 2018

Design Discovered in Insect Migration

It is easy for humans to minimize the design that is needed for life to exist on Earth. How do you feed massive numbers of birds, especially in the spring when winter has taken away most of their food sources, and their food needs are maximized as they lay eggs and feed baby birds? In the past scientists have shrugged their shoulders and imagined that there are food sources we don’t recognize that fill this gap until the summer season generates sufficient seeds and insects to sustain the growing populations. Similar problems exist for many other animals like bats that depend on insects for their nutritional needs.

In the April 2017 issue of Scientific American (page 84), there is an interesting report about previously unknown migrations of insects. We have known about monarch butterflies for some time, but this study by British researchers shows that migrations of insects are massive. Over southern Britain alone there are 3.3 trillion insects migrating. That is an average of 3200 tons of bugs moving through the skies over Britain every year. The study also reports that similar patterns have been observed in Texas, India, and China.

The complexity of this migration is astounding. Insects don’t live long enough for one bug to complete the migration. Researchers found that in some cases six generations were involved to complete a migration. The insects do not just get randomly blown about. They travel in a well-programmed pattern taking advantage of wind direction and speed. The elevation at which they fly to get the strongest support for their journey is carefully chosen. For a number of reasons, spring migrations are different from fall migrations.

We have much to learn from insects. Solomon made reference to ants as an example for us to learn from in Proverbs 6:6-11 and 30:24, 25. In our modern times, we see an amazing design that allows for the feeding of birds, bats, and other forms of life that need insects to survive. Constructing a chance model for all of this takes a huge amount of imagination. Recognizing God as the intelligence that gave this migration pattern to insects makes what we see just another example of knowing there is a God through the things he has made (Romans 1:20).
–John N. Clayton © 2017