penguins Archives

Penguins have features unlike any other living thing. The design of penguins allows them to dive over 100 feet to secure their food. National Geographic magazine lists these unique features of penguins:

1) Their wing shape is unique, allowing them to create a strong thrust underwater.

2) The wings have inflexible joints optimized for swimming.

3) The strong chest muscles allow them to lift their wings underwater.

4) They have elongated hip bones for swimming.

5) Their necks are S-shaped and can be retracted for swimming.

6) Salt-filtering glands above their eyes allow them to excrete salt they take in from the ocean.

7) Penguin bones are very dense for swimming and to withstand the stress of moving through water.

8) Their feathers are designed to adjust to temperatures and density. In hot weather, the feathers are raised to release heat. In cold weather, they lie flat to provide insulation. Penguins have patches without feathers in hot weather to decrease their weight and provide good buoyancy. They add feathers in cold weather to increase their body weight by 30%, making it easier to dive deep.

Realize that all these features are essential for living in their cold climate. To suggest that the penguins evolved from ordinary birds would require all these changes to happen simultaneously. In evolution, Dollo’s Law of Irreversibility states that once a feature is lost it cannot be retrieved. For a bird to become a penguin, Dollo’s Law would have to be broken multiple times.

The design of penguins demands an intelligent Designer to create these eight features in addition to several others. By studying the design of penguins, we can truly “know there is a God through the things that He has made” (Romans 1:20).

Reference: “Secrets of the Penguins” in the May 2025 issue of National Geographic, pages 16 to 57

Have you ever wondered how animals that live near Earth’s North and South Poles survive? What do they eat, and how can any kind of food chain exist? The answer to this is ice algae.

Unlike most plants, algae do not have flowers, roots, stems, leaves, or vascular tissue. However, ice algae, like most plants, provide the starting point for a food chain. In this case, it is a food chain in very cold places. Tiny krill, penguins, seals, polar bears, and blue whales all depend on ice algae to survive. In 2016 Dr. Thomas Brown of the Scottish Association for Marine Science studied polar bears and found that 86% of the polar bears’ nutrition came from a food chain that originated with ice algae.

Ice algae have chlorophyll so they can use whatever light is available for photosynthesis. There are a variety of types of algae that live in different conditions. Some live on the surface of the ocean, some on the floor of the ocean, and some in or on the ice itself. Ice algae produce fatty acids which supply nutritional value for animals that live in what would otherwise be a nutritional void. Because there is ice algae, animal life is abundant under, in, and around the ice at both poles.

God has provided interesting food chains all over the planet. As we study global warming and its effect on life in places like the polar seas, we see more of His handiwork and learn why we need to take care of it. The admonition of Genesis 2:15 to “take care of the garden to dress it and keep it” applies as much to us today as it did to Adam and Eve.
–John N. Clayton © 2019

Data from National Wildlife, February/March 2019, pages 14-16.

Tag: penguins

The Design of Penguins

Ice Algae – Designed Polar Grass