polar bears Archives - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

January 10, 2023January 9, 2023

Polar Bear Paws on Ice

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).

Rerence: American Scientist magazine for January/February 2023 page 15, or americanscientist.org

January 7, 2022January 6, 2022

Animal Tool Use and What It Means

An interesting fact about animals is their ability to use tools. Years ago, people thought that only humans used tools, but recent studies have shown animal tool use. However, the word “tool” means different things to different people.

Webster defines a tool as “an instrument used to accomplish a given task.” By that definition, we can find examples of animal tool use. We have reported on some of them before. For example, HERE and HERE.

Science News reported that polar bears sometimes kill walrus by bashing them with chunks of stone or ice. People have observed birds cracking nuts by dropping them from high altitudes onto rocks. Elephants use tree trunks for a variety of purposes, and crows use sticks to pry off the lids of bottles. Chimpanzees use conchoidally fractured chert or flint to cut open a fruit. Those of us who have bird feeders have seen squirrels use a tree branch to access a feeder. Recently, researchers in Israel taught fish how to drive a “car.”

There is a difference between a tool and a machine. According to the dictionary, a machine is “an assembly of interconnected components arranged to transmit or modify force in order to perform useful work.” A broader question here is whether intelligence is needed to fashion a machine? If that is the case, intelligent animals should be making machines, and mentally challenged humans would not be able to do so.

This discussion of animal tool use gets into difficulties because the anatomical parts of all animals are simple machines. Limbs are levers, and teeth are wedges. The design of all animals includes the equipment to secure food and shelter. Building into animals the ability to use objects in their environment to survive is another example of God’s design in the natural world.

Studies indicate incredible wisdom and planning in the creation of animal life. However, what sets humans apart from all other animals is not tools, machines, or intelligence. Instead, our spiritual nature is what makes humans different.

The ability of humans to create art, express ourselves in music, conceive of self, worship, and be taught to think set humans apart. To have an agape type of love that is not sexual and does not promote survival makes us human. The mentally challenged among us possess these abilities because all of us are created in the image of God. Animal tool use is far removed from possessing God’s image.

Reference: Science News, July 29, 2021.

February 3, 2019January 30, 2019

Ice Algae – Designed Polar Grass

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.