Daily Devotional – March 23

Biology

Dolphins navigate and find their prey by using echolocation. A dolphin emits clicking calls and listens for their returning echoes. The greater time for the return of the echo, the further away an object. Echolocation is similar to sonar. So how is echolocation produced in a dolphin? The dolphin sends out ultrasonic clicks through its nasal canals. These vocalizations travel through a fatty protrusion on its forehead. This melon-like structure is actually a “sound-lens” designed to focus the sound waves into a beam that can be directed. This sound lens uses different fatty compounds to bend the ultrasonic sound waves in different ways. These specifically placed and designed fatty compounds have to be arranged in the right shape and sequence in order to focus the sound waves properly. These fatty compounds are different from normal blubber fats and are made by a complicated chemical process that requires a number of different enzymes.

Once the dolphin focuses and directs his ultrasound signal, the noise hits an object and bounces back to the dolphin. Sinuses filled with special oil located within the dolphin’s lower jaw receive the returning echo. The sonic information then passes to the inner ear which changes the sound waves to nerve impulses. These signals are then sent to the brain. This sonar system is so precise that it can detect a fish the size of a golf ball 230 feet away. The dolphin’s sonar system is the envy of the U.S. Navy. For such an organ to evolve by random mutations is hard to believe because it took years for inventors to develop the sonar used on ships. Consider just the sound-lens in the dolphin’s sonar system. It needed to have the right enzymes to make the right fatty compounds, and the lens had to be the right size and the right shape and be in the right location. A partially functioning system is no system at all. Ships and submarines have man-made sonar; dolphins have God-made sonar.

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

~ Psalm 107:23,24

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett

References for this devotional.