Introduction

Mammals cover a vast array of specialized creatures, each designed to function in a unique habitat. The deeper we research, the more we wonder at these created marvels.

I.  Dolphins and Echolocation

Author Jonathan Sarfati calls to our attention the fact that a number of creatures find prey by echolocation.[1] The object’s speed and location are determined by the Doppler Effect, interpreting variations in sound and pitch of the returning signal. A dolphin can detect a fish the size of a golf ball 230 feet way! An expert in chaos theory demonstrated that the dolphin’s “click” pattern is mathematically designed to provide the best information.[2] Evolutionists are compelled to admit that “the ancestors of today’s dolphins had an ear structure that suggests that they could echolocate as well as their modern relatives can.”[3]

The dolphin produces clicks by pressurizing the nasal system, then manipulating air through the phonic lips. The click loudness automatically adjusts for distance. Behaving as a “sound lens,” they have special oil-filled sinuses in the lower jaw that pass the echoes to the inner ear. Accompanying this they have a “melon” fatty protrusion on the forehead that focuses the sound waves into a beam on different lipids.[4]

II.  Bats and Aerial Dynamics

Bats, too, use sonar echolocation, but they also possess unique wing design. The stretchy skin on a bat’s wing interacts with air in a different manner than the firmer wings of birds and insects. This elasticity, combined with dozens of joints (even more than in a human hand) allows bats to generate unusual wing shapes and motions, e.g. ones that give more lift at higher angles of stroke. Their wings can also be folded very close to the body to reduce drag.[5]

Palaeochiropteryx tupaiodon – one of the “oldest” bats, was found in the Messel oil shale pit near Darmstadt, Gemany, and is assigned an age of 48-54 million years (by evolutionary standards). It clearly had fully developed wings, and its inner ear had the same construction as those of modern bats, showing that it had full sonar equipment.[6] This discovery disrupts “evolutionary development” over long periods of time, and instead, demonstrates original masterful design in the bat features from a recent creation.

III. Whales and Humpback Flipper Bumps

The humpback whale has certain features that help it travel through its fluid medium with pronounced efficiency. Its bumpy flipper looks like poor design compared with smooth, sleek flippers. Research at the US Naval Academy using scale model flippers took advantage of these little bumps, called tubercles. In a wind tunnel, the smooth model behaved like a typical airplane wing. But the one with the tubercles has 8% better lift and an astounding 32% less drag. It also resisted “stalling” at a 40% steeper wing angle.[7]

IV.  The Human Spine and Optimal Design

“The inward curve of the lumbar spine – the lordosis – was thought by evolutionists to be a problem, the result of man standing upright…[Actually] the arch of the spine has a beautiful purpose, its like the arch of a bridge, it adds strength. Because of this arch in the lumbar spine, a man with a lumbar lordosis can lift proportionately more weight than a Gorilla with its kyphotic (outwardly curving) spine.

…[T]he bones of the spine have been ‘foam filled’ [‘light and strong’] with cancellous bone (with an open, latticed, or porous structure) surrounded by harder cortical bone since creation…The vertebral bodies increase in cross sectional area as you go further down the spine, because in the upright position the lower ones have to take on more load.”[8]

Numerous studies have hinted at the possibility that the spine is essentially a musical instrument. If so, the spine would incorporate some system of inaudible “sound resonance.” Using powders, liquids or pastes on sound boards, shapes have been sculpted purely by sound. Vibration caused material to take on a life of its own – and in its dance, beautiful symmetrical patters take shape. Some patterns look like rotating spiral galaxies or solar flares, others like flowers blooming or amoebae fusing.[9] “Bone is an excellent conductor of vibration and is therefore capable of resonance..[E]ach vertebra in the spine has a characteristic shape…[I]ndeed each vertebra does have a resonance frequency…[A]pplying the correct vibrational frequency to a vertebra can induce sympathetic vibration that restores the vertebra’s “natural” fundamental frequency.”[10] In addition, appropriate interaction of vibrational frequencies has been shown to increase bone density, thus extending the quality of life.[11] The human spine shows optimal, and incredible, design features.

[1] Sarfati, J., By Design, Creation Book Publishers, www.creationbookpublishers.com, p. 47

[2] Howlett, R., “Flippers Secret,” New Scientist, 154(2088) 34-39, 1997

[3] Perkins, S., “Learning to listen: How some vertebrates evolved biological sonar,” Science News 167(20); 314, 2005

[4] Sarfati, op cit, p. 48

[5] ibid., p.74

[6] ibid., p.75

[7] Miklosovic, D.S., et al., “Leading-edge Tubercles delay stall on Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) flippers, Physics of Fluids, 16(5), L39-L42, 2004

[8] Porter, R., “Standing upright for Creation,” Creation 25(1): 25-27, 2002

[9] Jenny, H., Cymatics: A Study of Wave Phenomena and Vibration, (Newmarket, NH: MACROmedia, 2001)

[10] Wieder, J., Song of the Spine (N. Charleston, SC: Booksurge, 2004)

[11] Rubin,C., Department of Biomedical Engineering, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Nature, 9 August, 2001