Did DOLPHINS and whales EVOLVE? Evolution says fish grew lungs and slithered ashore. Then, claims evolution, many RETURNED to the sea, DISCARDED their legs, changed them into flippers, "evolved"' a built-in grin and became dolphins and whales. DID THEY, REALLY? Dolphins grin at such stories -- and whales prove the whole thing is a fluke! And who is really mixed up, the duckbilled platypus of Australia, or the evolutionists who don't know how to explain him?
A man at the helm of an outboard motor boat in Hokianga Harbour, New Zealand, was startled to see a playful Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin cavorting in his wake. Soon, many boat operators noted the dolphin following their boats -- strangely attracted, it seemed, to the sound of their motors.
Then, bathers in the surf at the little beach town of Opononi began seeing the lonely female dolphin, swimming gaily among them in the shallow water.
As the dolphin grew more and more familiar with the bathers, she would swim with them, even allowing herself to be stroked and held. She seemed to like children best and would play ball with them, retrieving a ball and throwing it back to them with her mouth. She would even let some of the smaller ones ride on her back.
The little town of Opononi called the lonely female dolphin "Opo," and her fame spread throughout New Zealand, and finally around the world. The little hotel was booked solid for months in advance, and the curious came from everywhere.
Campers caused traffic jams as the crowds grew. Opononi passed a special law to protect the friendly creature, and a sign was erected at the town's entrance reading, "Welcome to Opononi, but don't try to shoot our gay dolphin!"
From 1955 to 1956 the fame of the friendly creature mounted until one morning when she did not appear. Children were apprehensive, and many concerned people expressed fear she had been killed, or injured. An extensive search finally discovered her body, washed ashore among some rocks. It was theorized the playful porpoise had been attracted by a fisherman's motor, and, swimming happily up to the boat, had been killed by a charge of explosives the fisherman was using to kill and stun fish.
The townspeople buried Opo in a sad, formal ceremony; and a grave marker and monument to the friendly dolphin still remain.
And then there was "Pelorus Jack," a famous dolphin who escorted ships and boats across Admiralty Bay, New Zealand, for three decades. Many tourists planned to make this steamship run, just to catch a glimpse of the dolphin -- and a special law was passed to protect him.
The Remarkable Intelligence of Dolphins
These experiences with the friendly creatures we call "Dolphins" or "Porpoises" have led man to discover, in recent years, that the toothed whales and dolphins are among some of the most intelligent of all creatures -- rated by some as superior to dogs and horses.
Visitors to the large Oceanariums are amazed at the antics of captive porpoises -- but not as amazed as their trainers at their grasp of directions, and the speed with which they learn. A professional animal trainer, Wally Ross, said, "After you've worked with porpoises -- chimpanzees, dogs, horses and elephants seem as dull as white mice."
The porpoises play many kinds of games -- leap out of the water in graceful formation -- tow dogs in tiny boats across lagoons, seize rings, running flags up poles, and can toss a football 50 or 60 feet (and with a perfect spiral!).
Porpoises can throw things with great accuracy. Some time ago, a group of porpoises at Marineland demonstrated their ability by throwing 20 rare tropical fish out of their tank. They didn't eat any of them -- just ejected them from the tank they considered their own. As if to rub salt in the wound -- after they had thrown the rare fish, one by one, into the spectator area, they saved the very last one until the right moment, and then bounced it off the head of the aquarium director as he left the tank.
Scientists are striving to measure the intelligence of the porpoises -- and are continually amazed at the creatures.
No "Bends," No Headaches, No Shortness of Breath!
But porpoises are being used for far more than casual entertainment and amusement.
Today, in the U. S. Navy's man-in-the-sea program, Sealab II, off San Diego, the Navy uses a seven-foot porpoise named "Tuffy" as a messenger boy.
Porpoises can dive more than 1,000 feet below the ocean surface, and come up without wasting time on decompression (an absolute necessity for a man to survive, since the formation of nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream can cause agonizing death or permanent injury). They can swim at speeds of better than 24 miles per hour, and locate objects up to 400 yards away with underwater sonar clicks. They can also communicate on two separate voice channels at once.
Tuffy was tested in Sealab experiments by a diver turning off his homing buzzer, and fastening a nylon cord to Tuffy's plastic harness. The dolphin immediately carried the line to another diver, who, pretending to be lost, had turned on a buzzer in the murky water 160 feet away. (Visibility, 10 feet.)
This experiment led to Tuffy's ability to retrieve a buzzer-equipped $4,700 rocket booster shot 200 yards out into the Pacific.
When the Sealab divers were remaining at 205 feet down for 15-day periods, Tuffy was their messenger to the surface. He wore a plastic harness, carried their mail back and forth in a waterproof tube, and took tools to the divers.
Dolphins emit a series of clicks, whistles and blatting sounds underwater -- and make squawks and squeaks with their heads out of water. Currently, in Pasadena, scientists are trying to decipher the manner in which the creatures "talk" by running a series of recorded sounds through computers to find sound patterns, and see in what way different sounds are related to different actions.
The dolphin's sonar is so sophisticated, he can DIRECT it, unlike man-made sonar. Most of man's sonar uses a pure tone -- while that of the dolphins mixes the signals into high-and low-frequency components.
Another thing -- no one has ever been able to "jam" a dolphin's sonar.
Says Doctor Sidney Galler of ONR (Office of Naval Research), "The porpoise's echo-location system and navigation capability is far superior to the most sophisticated system we have in our most modern submarines, and it weighs only a few pounds. This is a marvel of micro-miniaturization!"
The "sonar" of the porpoises is termed "second to none," including the echo-ranging of the bats. But scientists don't yet know HOW the dolphins and whales make such sounds.
They have no vocal cords!
The Toothed Whales
All dolphins and whales are mammals. They are warm-blooded, air-breathing creatures who bear their young alive, and suckle them, like all mammals. But whales are divided into different categories, depending upon their specialized food-getting equipment.
The great Sperm Whale has teeth, while the mammoth Right Whale, and Blue Whale do not.
The migrations of the whales, their feeding habits, their ability to store up vast amounts of body fat, their prodigious size and strength, all have given rise to a sense of awe and amazement at these monsters of all life.
Their remarkable ability to navigate in the PITCH DARKNESS of the ocean depths (there is NO LIGHT WHATEVER below approximately 1,000 feet -- but only eternal blackness) has amazed whalers and scientists. Dolphins generally do not go below 1,000 feet -- but the great whales have been known to go far deeper.
Has it ever occurred to you that we are living among creatures every whit as amazing, as awesome, as terrifying, or as humorous, as those found in the fossil record?
The biggest dinosaur would be dwarfed beside the giant whales now swimming in the oceans!
But think of the stories you would read if whales had been found ONLY AS FOSSILS!
Is the mammoth whale REALLY the result of an evolutionary return to the sea?
Did dolphins and toothed whales REALLY become disgusted with their "life on land," and effect all those REMARKABLE changes (only a FEW of which have been mentioned here) to enable them to become dolphins and whales?
So evolution would have you believe.
But the whales and dolphins -- among the most remarkable of all living creatures -- cannot be explained away by unimaginable caprice. While whales have a whale of a tale to tell -- and the stories about them all are well worth reading -- those tales are nowhere NEAR the "whoppers" of the supposed story of their "evolution."
A Whale of a Fish Story
Evolutionists say "the whale's past is extremely obscure. All we know is that sometime ... some smallish, four-footed land animals began a series of extraordinarily rapid evolutionary changes. In the geologically short span of 50 million years they learned to swim instead of walk, and to reproduce offspring able to swim from the moment they left the womb." (The Living World of the Sea, William J. Cromie, p.268-269.)
But that's only a part of the fantastic story. Later, goes the tale, these beasts lost their ears and hind legs -- developed a body shaped like a torpedo, with a horizontal tail, arranged for their nostrils to move up to the top of their heads, lost their hair, totally changed their whole metabolism, their bone structure, their skin texture and composition, enlarged their brains, altered their nervous system, changed their whole digestive apparatus, altered their eyes, their teeth and their ears -- and became dolphins and toothed whales.
But DID THEY REALLY do all this? Can it be PROVED? Is there fossil evidence? Are these ideas accurate? How could they "gradually" change in such a drastic manner? What CAUSED these changes?
A Plethora of Missing Evidence
If you were to ask an evolutionist, "Are YOU SURE whales and dolphins used to be LAND ANIMALS ?" he would probably answer, "SURE, we're sure!" If you asked next, "But do you have any PROOF?' His answer would be .... but let's quote from some answers to just such questions.
"After adapting to life on land, the ancestors of porpoises, for reasons no one knows, went back to the sea. This happened about fifty million years ago; and just what the land animal was like no one can be sure, for the 'missing links' in its evolution are lost beneath the sea. IT IS CERTAIN, however, that the land mammal went through a long process of readapting to life in the water." ("Porpoises, Our Friends in the Sea," Robert Conly, National Geographic, p.404-406, Sept. 1966.)
How about that? How would you like to be tried in court by that kind of "evidence?"
First you're told, in definite, positive terms, these creatures DID EVOLVE from land animals. WHAT KIND of land animals? No one knows. Where is the EVIDENCE? It's nonexistent. Missing. How can they be so SURE? Well -- they just ARE!
One evolutionist admitted, "As the science of oceanography progresses, we may find the whales' complete skeletal record in the oceans' bottoms. Until then the guesses are further apart than those for man's evolutionary record." (Man and Dolphin, John C. Kelly, p. 181.)
Notice it carefully. The ideas about man's evolution are, admittedly, GUESSES. And some of the guesses are pretty wild. But, admits evolution -- the guesses concerning the past "development" of whales are even WILDER!
That's really crawling out on a limb. Or, perhaps we should say, a flipper.
But How does an intricately designed, "highly specialized" (a term evolutionists use to hide their amazement of the marvelous complexity of many creatures) animal "evolve?" How does "evolution" occur?
The evolutionists theorize that, GIVEN ENOUGH TIME virtually anything can happen. Do explosions in print shops produce the unabridged dictionary? Do dump trucks, dumping a load of bricks, produce palatial mansions, complete with carpets, appliances, chandeliers, and rare paintings? Do city dumps produce typewriters which, falling together, accidentally type out the Encyclopaedia Americana?
Yet these are some of the very arguments used in college classrooms today!
But WHY do evolutionists "take the long way around" in their guesses about the "evolution" of whales and dolphins? Simply because, to remain loyal to their THEORY, they MUST.
You see, most (but by no means all) evolutionists claim life began in the sea. (Some say it began between cracks in rocks; others say from polka-dotted air bubbles in the sea; others from scum; others from "soup" and still others from "slime.") Since they have generally agreed life began in the sea, they must insist that ALL living forms "gradually" found their way from the sea to the land, and to the air.
But MAMMALS, in the broad classification of vertebrates, bearing their young alive, and suckling those young -- must BREATHE AIR. Fish also live from "air" but the air is filtered from the water through their marvelously intricate gills.
So -- in evolutionary thought, it was necessary for these air-breathing, live-bearing mammals of the deep to "take the long way around," so to speak, first "evolving" into ANIMALS on the dry land, and then evolving PART WAY back to fish, but "keeping" their lungs and their method of bearing their young alive, and suckling them.
The evidence for such fantastic developments?
All missing.
There is none. Evolution doesn't know what KIND of "animal" or WHICH animal Of WHAT kind of fossil remains (because there ARE NO SUCH REMAINS) to claim as the most ancient "ancestor" of these mammals of the sea.
But, they staunchly affirm their fantastic FAITH in such a theory, in spite of the utter lack of evidence.
Again, however, there is disagreement among evolutionists. "The ancestors of all whales, we know by fossil remains, were land mammals" asserted Rachel Carson, in the book, The Sea Around Us, on page 40. "They must have been predatory beasts," continues the imaginary assertion, "if we are to judge by their powerful jaws and teeth. Perhaps, in their foragings about the deltas of great rivers or around the edges of shallow seas, they discovered the abundance of fish and other marine life and over the centuries formed the habit of following them farther and farther into the sea."
But is this true? Did it really HAPPEN?
There is no evidence. No intermediate species. No PART-land animal, and PART whale; no half-leg, half-flipper; no skeletons, no fossil imprints, no evidence of any kind.
Another authority states, "NO FOSSIL REMAINS OF THE LAND ANCESTOR OF THE WHALE HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED AS YET" (Introduction to Historical Geology, William L. Stokes, p. 419-420).
Yet -- in Spite of MISSING, "evidence" and NO proof, evolutionists continue clinging to their faith. Faith in nothing.
How to Breathe Through the Back of Your Head
How do whales and dolphins breathe? How do they breathe while they're asleep? Why don't they unconsciously open their air vents, and take a breath of seawater?
Scientists have discovered the centers controlling breathing are arranged differently in dolphins than in man and other mammals. Man is continually surrounded by a mantle of air -- so he breathes involuntarily (without being conscious of a definite task of respiration) most of the time. While breathing can become conscious, or voluntary -- it is involuntary most of the time.
But what about a dolphin? It's only logical to admit that an air-breathing creature who lives in the sea must be somehow CONSCIOUS of where it is at each breath -- or it could drown! What about sleep? What about those deep dives?
Frankly, scientists admit what they do NOT know about whales and dolphins is a great deal! They do not know, for instance, how it is whales, seals, and dolphins can survive dives of several hundred fathoms without developing a terrible case of "bends" or caisson disease. Human divers can be killed if surfacing rapidly from 200 feet or so, while dolphins can plunge down much further than that, and return to the surface immediately, with no ill effects.
In attempting to explain these marvelous feats, one scientist admitted, "The plain truth is, however, that we really do not know [how dolphins and whales survive such deep dives], since it is obviously impossible to confine a living whale and experiment on it, and almost as difficult to dissect a dead one satisfactorily" (The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson, p. 41).
The amazing breath control of these creatures is without parallel in all the creation.
Scientists are not yet sure, but they believe the centers controlling respiration probably are located in the cerebral cortex, instead of in the brain stem, as in man.
If this is true -- then breathing is always a conscious and voluntary act for dolphins and whales -- and never involuntary.
In one experiment, a dolphin had suffered from possible anoxemia, and was placed back in a tank. It fell onto the right side when it tried to swim, and appeared unable to rise to the surface normally to breathe. It uttered a short, sharp, high-pitched whistle, in two parts, with a rising and falling pitch -- heard not only audibly by observers, but also recorded on tape.
The other two animals in the tank swam immediately to the stricken porpoise, swam under his head, and pushed him to the surface so he could breathe. He breathed, submerged, and then followed a twittering, whistling conversation among the three.
They took turns swimming along the right side of the injured animal, allowing him to press against their bodies so he could rise to the surface and breathe!
In their subsequent interference in what the animals were doing, the scientists discovered yet another amazing fact about dolphins. They took the stricken animal from the tank, and tried draining water out of its blow-hole by holding its head downward at a 45-degree angle. But they found dolphins can voluntarily blow water out of the lungs into the mouth (but remember -- their nose is in the back of their head!), apparently able to disengage the larynx from the nasal pharynx! Until that time, scientists had falsely assumed the air and food passages were completely separate.
And What About Birth?
Baby dolphins are born UNDER water -- and must, within moments, take their first breath of air, just as human babies do! But there's an important difference! Human babies just GASP for air, involuntarily, and breathing becomes an immediate unconscious act.
But not so for baby dolphins.
As mama dolphin nudges them gently to the surface, they must somehow AUTOMATICALLY open and breathe through their brand-new little air vent AT JUST THE RIGHT MOMENT, then close it tight again, submerging to swim alongside their parent.
IMMEDIATELY, they must establish PERFECTLY the voluntary act of breathing by opening and closing the air vent at precisely that instant when the dorsal hump is above the surface and just barely before it plunges below again.
A second too soon -- and the baby creature would drown. A second too late, and the same thing would happen.
And baby porpoises nurse under water, too. Swimming alongside their mothers, the little grinning creatures suckle at their mother's specially built underwater paps, somehow managing to receive only milk, and no salt water.
That brings to mind another amazing proclivity of the porpoises.
What Scientists Don't Know!
Scientists have wondered HOW PORPOISES DRINK WATER! Some think the animals receive water only by eating the flesh of fish; others have wondered if they actually swallow salt water, and somehow desalinize it in the digestive system.
Others have wondered if it is somehow filtered into the creatures' bodies through the skin.
As a matter of fact, what is NOT KNOWN about dolphins is quite substantial.
Scientists do know whales and dolphins MIGRATE. But how do they?
No one knows for sure. It is thought by some that they actually migrate by the sun, moon and stars, somehow solving the highly complex and difficult task of getting a spray-soaked view of distant stars through eyes that are built more for seeing under water than out, (though a dolphin's vision is EXCELLENT in either element) or perhaps a distorted view of only a few of the stars through the water.
Others suppose they may migrate depending upon depth soundings, type of ocean bottom, ocean currents, water temperature, plankton (krill), taste of water, or salinity.
Actually, as all this indicates, they just don't know how dolphins and whales migrate.
Scientists wonder just how intelligent dolphins are. For instance, it has been suggested by one that dolphins have a kind of "nomadic culture," and possibly even herd fish along with them in their travels for food!
Since a baby dolphin is not weaned for eighteen to twenty-one months, scientists believe the babies are taught many things by their mothers during this time, and that their large brains (no whale has yet been found with a brain smaller than man's) are able to store up an amazing amount of knowledge based on the mother's chattering, whistles, gestures, body movements and actions.
Their vision is amazing. To avoid the effect you would experience if you looked up from a swimming pool with a face mask on (you would see only a distorted mirror except for the area directly above your head), dolphins stick their heads clear up out of the water, looking around in all directions. Their vision is equally as good IN the water or OUT.
Scientists wonder whether dolphins have a peculiarly shaped cornea -- shaped differently in the center than at the edges. They do know that the iris has a curtain which, when illuminated in a bright light, shows a U-shaped slit. This slit would be used in the air, but in the water this curtain would be raised as light is reduced enabling the center of the cornea to focus in water on the same fovea (area in eye making acute vision possible).
Do dolphins use muscular control on their corneas? Possibly so. The cornea could be made to bulge and flatten alternately by muscular control along the free edge of the cartilage shell around it -- since the animal has unusual control over the eyeball, allowing it to look upward, backward, downward or forward.
The cornea could be, scientists believe, a very complex water-containing bag, which, when alternately flattening or relaxing, may be able to focus perfectly in the two totally different media; air and water!
But they don't know for sure!
And a dolphin's skin is remarkable! Ever try to hose some dirt off a doormat, or piece of old carpet? The effect is virtually no spray!
Scientists have found the dolphins have a remarkable many-layered skin, part of which becomes completely watersoaked, and allows them to travel much faster through the water. The Navy is thinking of experimenting with skin-like coverings over the hulls of their submarines to achieve even greater speed. Incidentally, next time you see a picture of the blunt snout of a U. S. Navy nuclear submarine -- remember: it was designed that way when they found the blunter snout of the huge whales is more aquadynamically sound for speed than the sharper prows of older model submarines.
The Dilemma of the Doubting Dolphin
But now let's go back in time. Way, way back -- beyond the wildest imaginations of even an evolutionist. Let's be sure to include ENOUGH time -- so let's go back so far it's impossible to write the figure.
Remember, there had to be enough genetic mutations to produce a FIRST experience for some remote ancestor of the dolphins. There had to be that FIRST time in the history of dolphindom when some of these creatures simply did NOT come back to shore again.
So let's imagine we're watching Dither, the doleful dolphin, doubtfully deducing whether he can dive into the deep and not drown.
Dither is perplexed. His ancestors had managed, by vast genetic mutation (or so the story would go), to exchange their legs for fins, drop off their hair, and exchange it for a fantastically designed, triple-layered hide that soaks up the water and increases speed; move the nose up to the back of the head, alter the whole metabolism, diet, bone structure, reproductive apparatus, brain size, eyes, lungs, nervous system and voice.
Dither has somehow managed to receive these traits in spite of the millions of tragedies that brought him to this dubious dilemma.
You see, millions of his ancestors had been drowning because their genetic structure had not completely mutated. They became water-logged as their hair soaked up the water and their not quite flippers (which were really legs, with claws) couldn't propel them back to the surface quickly enough.
Scores more drowned in the shallow water trying to operate their new air vents by involuntary breathing. Millions of babies drowned, repeatedly, when they were born underwater, and immediately sucked gallons of water through the top of their heads.
Millions of others died as they attempted that still deeper dive after an escaping morsel of fast yellowtail; plunging down to 750 feet, they surfaced again, only to collapse in spasms of caisson disease, as nitrogen bubbles formed in their bloodstream.
Actually, such creatures never existed.
Dither doesn't exist, either; since his ancestors all perished.
But let's use our imaginations with great porpoise-er, I mean, purpose!
Dither's Voyage
Dither knows a great voyage is at hand. His new genes have given him the urge. His instinct tells him he must be properly equipped to survive in this great epic journey (he has finally decided to migrate about 8,000 miles across the trackless seas). "Let's see, now," Dither muses (figuratively), "compass? Maps and charts? Soundings of the ocean depths? What about reports on plankton, and fish locations? And how about all the vast collection of meteorological knowledge, astronomy, and information about currents, tides, salinity, ocean taste, and how to observe the stars through salt spray?"
Dither delays.
But some strange evolution-dominated genetic compulsion (perhaps the same feeling some students experience when reading similar tales in more erudite language?) grips the dubious dolphin.
Taking a great gulp of air, he dives into the heaving deep.
Happily, he swims along, surfacing regularly for air. He has evolved a fairly successful method of breathing now -- blowing out just as he surfaces to clear his new, behind-the-head nose, and then gasping in a quick breath just before his lunge carries him under again.
For miles he swims. He gets very, very thirsty. After all, those last few sardines he ate were pretty salty! Now for a drink! But -- "Oh, No!" He forgot! He always used to wander ashore for a drink of nice, fresh water, like any self-respecting, half-dolphin, half-smallish-four-footed animal!
And poor Dither forgot that his genetic constitution wouldn't -- didn't make it possible for him to drink salt water!
He squeezed his cornea, preparing it for a view out of the water; and, by powerful sweeps of his novel new flukes, rears his head out of the waves to have a look around.
Nothing. Only the broad expanse of ocean. Ocean and more ocean. And all that water and not a drop fit to drink! He hasn't yet evolved his desalinization equipment!
Frantically, he swims in ever-widening circles. Panting, gasping for a drink of water -- he searches frequently for shore.
At last, near exhaustion, he gulps a gallon of salt water. Then he dies, in agony, as his freshwater stomach and freshwater body absorbs all that salt.
The same difficulties could be applied to all the amazingly complex abilities of dolphins and whales.
But let's be LOGICAL.
COULD it be possible such marvelously designed, perfectly formed, amazingly complex creatures just "happened"?
Remember, somehow, somewhere, IF evolution has a "leg" to stand on, those very FIRST "pre-dolphins" put to sea. But what about TWO of them leaving at the same time? What about the convenient arrangements of the reproductive apparatus (which we haven't even described in this article!), and all the fantastic things you've learned about dolphins?
Remember again, that the VERY FIRST migration; the very FIRST deep dive; the very FIRST attempt to capture fish for a meal; the very FIRST use of salt water; the very FIRST underwater birth; the very FIRST voluntary control of breathing -- these and a myriad more fantastic FIRSTS all had to occur AT THE SAME TIME! At the very INSTANT the first dolphin swam!
And -- from these fantastic abilities, do scientists see great THOUGHT and PLANNING? Do they observe great DESIGN and intricate CREATION? Do they stand in AWE of the great MIND it took to PRODUCE and put into action such huge creatures?
Not at all. They see only the creature -- not the Creator. They see only the material creation -- not its Producer and Designer!
But, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to convince some people.
So, let's try again.
Whales and dolphins are certainly unusual mammals. But there is an even more enigmatic mammal found in Australia. And he virtually stuns evolutionists.
The Unbelievable Platypus
"BIZARRE!" "Monstrous Misfit!" "UNBELIEVABLE!" "An impossible patchwork creature!" say evolutionists of the duckbill platypus.
Such are the shocked explicatives evolutionists use when trying to describe and explain one of the "strangest" creatures alive today -- the duckbill platypus.
Native to Australia, the platypus SEEMS to be a "Patchwork" animal -- because evolution likes to see some sort of comparison or inter- relationship in all living things. In trying to relate the platypus to various other animals, evolutionists have not been able to stop short of at least four or five widely differing creatures -- nowhere near each other in the purely fanciful "evolutionary tree."
The platypus, at first glance, looks like some strange little duck-like beaver-otter. It has webbed forefeet, like an otter, but with tough skin that extends beyond the toes for swimming, and retracts behind the toes for burrowing! The male of the species has a pit, or sharp, hollow spur on its hind foot. Like a pit viper, it carries a fairly poisonous venom.
But its tail is muscular, and flat, shaped like a beaver's tail -- still, even though looking like a beaver tail, it is covered with fur instead of SCALES! The appearance of the construction of the shoulder, or "shoulder girdle" is definitely reptilian.
And then there's the strange-looking "bill." But while ducks have a fairly hard and bony bill, the bill of the platypus is of a softer texture, like pliable skin, and is filled with highly sensitive nerves. You see, when a platypus dives to the bottom of his watery habitat to feed, he closes his eyes, and finds his way about with the most effective guidance system built into his "bill" -- gobbling up worms and other marine foods.
Since the little animal "suckles" its young, it is "classified" as a mammal. But -- astounding though it seems, it lays eggs! The eggs are "reptilian" in nature, being much like turtle's eggs in appearance, and covered with a skin-like texture, instead of a hard shell. And the little platypus doesn't really "suckle" its young, but actually secretes the milk from a mammary opening, which then drips from the hair of the underbelly, and the young lap the milk from the hair!
But in spite of the duck-like bill, beaver-like tail, snake-like eggs and venom fang, and with otter-like forefeet and young-suckling (but not really!) characteristics of the mammals, the little creature has only a single ventral opening for elimination, mating and birth -- just like REPTILES! But the trouble is, he is warm-blooded, which reptiles are not! Further, he stores food in cheek pouches, like some mammals, but UNLIKE mammals, has no exterior ear, but only an opening into his hearing apparatus, which is located inside!
No WONDER evolutionists get "mixed-up" when they attempt to "properly place" the duck-billed platypus in their evolutionary tree!
In fact, early evolutionists chose the easiest way out -- they simply refused to believe the creature existed. Others said it was a strange HOAX.
A Chinese Joke
Zoologists actually thought that some clever Chinese had SEWN TOGETHER parts of different animals. These patched-up animals -- thought zoologists -- had been sold to sailors as a joke.
Around 1798, an English naturalist, George Shaw, described one of these patchwork platypuses.
"Of all the mammals yet known it seems the most extraordinary in its conformation, exhibiting the perfect resemblance of the beak of a duck GRAFTED ON the head of a quadruped.
"So accurate is the appearance, that, at first view, it naturally excites the idea of some DECEPTIVE PREPARATION by artificial means.
"On a subject so extraordinary as the present, a degree of skepticism is not only pardonable, but laudable; and I ought perhaps to acknowledge that I almost DOUBT the testimony of my own eyes." (Quoted in The Platypus, Harry Burrell, pages 17, 19 -- a few words slightly changed to bring language up to date.)
This creature was so strange, one scientist even dubbed it "paradoxus." Fortunately, naturalists didn't know that the platypus laid eggs and suckled its young at the time. Otherwise, sanity among that class of scientists may have been sharply curtailed.
Another anatomist, from Edinburgh, Scotland, had this to say about the platypus:
"It is well known that specimens of this very extraordinary animal when first brought to Europe were considered by many to be IMPOSITIONS. They reached England by vessels which had navigated the Indian seas, a circumstance arousing the suspicions of scientists, aware of the monstrous impostures which the artful Chinese then practiced on European adventurers.
"These oriental taxidermists were quite notorious for their skill in constructing NONEXISTENT ANIMALS for sale to credulous seamen, such as the so-called 'eastern mermaid,' to be seen occasionally in curiosity shops to this day, consisting of the forepart of a monkey skillfully stitched to the tail of a fish" (Furred Animals of Australia, Ellis Troughton, page 4).
Platypus Finally Accepted
But it wasn't any Chinese joke! And it wasn't a mistake. Here was a creature-on the basis of "scientific" classification -- which could either be mammal, bird or reptile! The platypus simply did not FIT the evolutionary scheme of things.
Even more amazing, there was NOTHING transitional about the platypus. He was highly intelligent and remarkably built to fit his environment.
Since a live or preserved specimen had never been seen, most zoologists "pooh-poohed" the idea that such a creature could exist.
But in the early 1800's the platypus won his place of honor as a bona fide inhabitant of the earth!
"The furore touched off by the written description of the platypus was revived and amplified a few years later when the British Museum received a pair of pickled specimens sent in a cask of spirits by Governor James Hunter of New South Wales, Australia.
"Dried skins had been received before, but these were the FIRST actual specimens to be seen outside the Antipodes.
"They were turned over to Everard Home, a distinguished anatomist, for dissection. Dr. Home's report left the members of the Royal Society in A state of stunned incredulity. He pronounced this egg-laying aquatic mammal OUTRAGEOUS BUT GENUINE!" (Marvels and Mysteries of Our Animal World, Reader's Digest Publication, page 82.)
Who's Mixed Up?
Why do zoologists, taxonomists, and other scientists express such incredulity at the platypus? Why are they left gasping in disbelief when they list out the parts of a platypus?
Strangely, the platypus isn't bothered by his "patchwork" appearance. He goes right on living -- and reproducing.
The answer is that the platypus tears apart a patchwork theory -- the theory Of EVOLUTION!
Why?
Most of the theory of evolution is based on COMPARISON. Evolutionists compare one creature with another in an attempt to construct a family tree.
Of course, as we all should know, comparison is just another form of ANALOGY. And analogies prove NOTHING of themselves. They can only add explanation to something already proved.
But the platypus DISRUPTS the evolutionist's neatly laid out family trees. (More of this later!) But now, let's read and analyze some of these incredulous statements made by scientists.
"Every writer upon the platypus begins with an expression of wonder. Never was there such a disconcerting animal! This wonder finds a very curious expression in the determined efforts made to retain Blumenbach's name paradoxus, against all the rules of zoological nomenclature." (The Platypus, Harry Burrell, page 6.)
From the National Geographic article, "Australia's Patchwork Creature" by Charles H. Holmes, page 273, "An impossible patchwork creature it seemed, equally at home in the water or on the land, boasting something of fish, fowl, beast, and reptile and richly deserving the name it was given at first, Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, or bird-bill paradox."
But why should the platypus appear as a paradox? It seems to survive pretty well. It doesn't feel like a patchwork animal. As a matter of fact, a platypus is rather a cute creature.
Shock to Zoologists
Here's another admission of shock:
"Since the aim of science is to find order in the apparent chaos of the natural world, it came as a SHOCK to Zoologists 160 years ago to confront a small furry animal with a beaver-like tail and a duck-like bill" (The Wonders of Life on Earth, Editors of LIFE, page 174).
No animal has given such a rise to so much controversy among scientists and evolutionists.
Another exclamation of shock appeared in a recent Australian publication:
"Australia is a land ... of the oddest animal misfits on the face of the earth ... platypuses, besides being almost UNBELIEVABLE at first sight, are perhaps the most adaptable creatures that ever walked, swam or burrowed!
"They have absorbed EVERY MAD TRICK that evolution has handed out" (Walkabout, article, "He's Just an Old Fossil," Kendrick Howard, page 12).
Ah, now we're getting closer to the problem.
Why is he an "animal misfit"? Because it appears that the platypus has too many evolutionary innovations under one skin. Remember, there's nothing weird about a platypus. He's not a misfit; he isn't handicapped; he's not lame.
As a matter of fact, the platypus does quite well for himself.
But he bothers evolutionists!
Oh, they try to explain him away. But in the back of their heads, evolutionists must feel rather uneasy about the plague of platypuses.
Another book accuses the innocent platypus of this:
"The platypus of Australia and Tasmania [are] the MOST BIZARRE of living mammals" (Evolution, LIFE NATURE LIBRARY, page 60).
But what is really "bizarre" about the platypus?
Absolutely nothing. He's perfectly designed for his specific place in "nature," a fine swimmer, a good burrower, a hardy, happy, busy little creature who gazes balefully at the hysterical accusations of scientists whose cherished theories left no room for him. Can the platypus help it if evolutionists' theories were so weirdly inadequate they provided no space for his existence?
Think of it! The evolutionists believe even the various PARTS Of the same animal are "unrelated," and yet they function together PERFECTLY!
Evolution demands we explain all life forms, no matter HOW "strange" appearing (and what could be stranger than an elephant, or a giraffe, or a rhinoceros, or a narwhal?) as having GRADUALLY evolved from common, early ancestors.
This gradual evolution, they insist, was guided by the ALL-POWERFUL pseudo-god spoken of in so many texts, "natural selection." This "natural selection" more or less AUTOMATICALLY determined which creatures were best suited to their environment -- which could "adapt" or go through some sort of required "change" demanded by changing environment.
In attempting to portray these imagined "changes" and "adaptations," evolution offers views of strange "family trees" -- pictures of various "simple" life forms, followed by crustaceans, jellyfish and the like, branching off into fishes, amphibians, land mammals; up the trees to various leaping mammals and to birds, or from the land mammals to man.
Did it ever occur to the average layman that all such attempts to "show" an evolutionary process by various "relationships" in such creatures is pure inference by analogy? As we have already mentioned, an analogy is NOT PROOF. It merely makes clear what is already proven by fact.
Does it never occur to the layman to demand evidence of the multiple THOUSANDS of "intermediate" species which could possibly SUBSTANTIATE such a fantastic story? That there would be infinitely more varieties of creatures with HALF-scales HALF-feathers than with whole ones? And especially, since these creatures (which did not exist) were "not so well equipped" to survive, that the fossil records should ABOUND with such evidence -- when in reality it is utterly vacant?
The Very First "Platywhatever"
Based on the evolutionary demands for "gradual" genetic change by "natural selection" let's be logical. Let's walk back in time. Back, back -- millions or billions (or, if evolution insists, even quintillions) of years ago.
We are looking at our first little "platywhatever" -- a product of hundreds upon hundreds of generations of new innovations. He is not, decidedly, a "full-fledged" platypus, complete with beaver's tail, duck's bill, otter's body, snake's fang, mammal's glands or turtle's eggs!
Somehow, his genetic combinations have caused him to be somewhere in between, or under, or somewhere around one or the other of these "stages."
Let's say he lives along the banks of a stream. But he can't swim yet, because, being like any other normal burrowing animal, his genes have only produced claws for digging, hasn't evolved retractable webbed feet, nor developed a tail for a keel, nor "learned" to hold his breath that long, nor developed waterproof hair.
But if that's true, then why would genes mutate for retractable webbed feet, and allow him to swim only with his forefeet, dragging the hind feet rather uselessly along after?
But if evolution is caused by undirected genetic mutation sifted by blind natural selection -- WHY is there purpose and design to every aspect of the platypus? Evolutionists are between a "rock and a hard place."
But, now, back to our story.
The hungry "platywhatever" pauses by the side of the stream. Formerly his ancestors were accustomed to eating various tiny animals, or plants, or whatever may have suited their particular fancy.
But newly mutated genes cause a new "thought" to enter his mind. He decides to eat soft, water-soaked worms!
But WHY should he want to begin feeding on the bottom of streams, when he can't see any food there, and he can't swim underwater, either? And if he MUST begin feeding along stream bottoms in order to survive, then why don't ALL CREATURES ON EARTH with a similar diet feed along on stream bottoms? How did all the other myriad of creatures keep "surviving" without ever getting wetter than the drenching a good rain gives them?
If this first "platywhatever" had to evolve water-feeding apparatus, then he only evolved it because he needed it. And if he needed it, that means he wasn't getting sufficient food where he was to survive. But if he couldn't have survived where he was -- and obviously, couldn't have succeeded in obtaining food from stream bottoms until he had gradually, over MILLIONS OF YEARS, evolved that supersensitive bill, and those retractable, skin-covered forefeet, and his whole, specially designed aquatic body and tail -- then he obviously starved to death, and therefore does not exist today. (Whew!)
Success or Death
It should be obvious to any thinking person that the very first time genes produced the instinct to feed along the bottom of streams, one of two things would have happened. Either a successful enough feeding to satisfy him -- meaning he was already perfectly adapted to obtain food in that fashion, and therefore should have survived as a "platywhatever" instead of a "platypus." Or, secondly, an empty stomach and complete frustration, leading him to evolve into something else.
But our story has more chapters.
This "platywhatever" dives into the water. But -- alas! He hasn't developed genes for swimming. His hair has not had the benefit of water-resistant mutated genes. Besides, he can't see -- and as yet has not "evolved" his extremely sensitive, skin- covered, navigator's and food-finder's mechanism in his bill -- after all, he's never HAD to search for underwater worms with his EYES CLOSED before!
So, laden with water-forefeet clawing to no avail, for lack of webs, hind feet hanging uselessly, he is caught in the turbid current, and swept away into the sands of time -- where he appears not as a "platypus," but as a "Primitivus, beaverus, otterus, duckus, beakus, incredibilus?"
But no. That won't work, either. Because no such "creature" is FOUND in the fossils.
Let's concentrate on his children surviving -- since obviously he is not even remotely EQUIPPED to survive -- and of course, would require hundreds of thousands of years to develop a new genetic makeup. (At least, not as a platypus. And if he's equipped to survive as a SOMETHING ELSE -- then WHY DIDN'T HE ?)
Let's say, after a few hundred thousand years the first fully mutated "platywhatever" was wandering along the banks of his favorite stream one day in what finally became Australia, and ran smack into the most challenging question evolution could EVER have to answer -- a mate, of the opposite sex, that looked exactly the same except for certain important details -- at least, important to him.
In due time, babies are born.
Perhaps they began bearing the young ALIVE, and, not having yet "evolved" the special technique of secreting milk on a given signal that involves enough nerve endings and special sensory techniques -- not to mention fathomless animal INSTINCT -- to give a computer a headache, the young starve to death.
But let's forget all those problems -- after all, evolution has.
Let's try to imagine HOW ANY ONE GIVEN PART of the platypus COULD POSSIBLY have evolved!
Take the eyes.
The platypus has normal eyesight -- but, in swimming underwater, keeps them tightly shut! SO WHICH CAME FIRST? Did he begin surviving by keeping his eyes OPEN underwater, and finding the worms and other food visually? If so, then WHY EVOLVE that odd BEAK ???
Evolution the Hard Way
If his sensitive bill was ONLY necessary as a food-finding nerve center -- then he would NOT have begun "evolving" it until it became NECESSARY! It was not really necessary if he could SEE, was it?
And wouldn't it have been far easier to simply evolve a kind of skin over his eyes and continue keeping them open, instead of evolving the most surprising proboscis in the whole world?
Shall we assume he BEGAN with the proboscis (nose) and without eyes?
No -- the very first time the very first platypus swam underwater to find food, he had to have a perfectly developed body for swimming, tail for a keel, since he swims with his front two legs only; webs to be stretched out over his burrowing toenails for paddling; waterproof hair to keep him from drowning; and an extremely sensitive nerve-filled "bill" for finding his way, and finding his food.
The very first time two platypuses mated, they had to already have BUILT-IN instincts (so the male didn't accidentally jab the female with his dangerous "fang" on a hind foot, for instance) so they would not walk off and leave the eggs, but await their hatching, and then proceed to "nurse" the offspring -- NOT by nursing, but by secreting the milk onto underbelly hair at various intervals.
"... But is this 'fair' reasoning?"
But is this "fair" to evolution? Is it "fair" to try to see LOGIC in its claims? Is it "fair" to attempt some sort of rational, logical, appealing method by which evolution COULD HAVE taken place?
Or is that against the rules?
Honestly, now -- since EVOLUTIONISTS THEMSELVES have no real ANSWERS as to the true origin of the platypus -- do YOU CLAIM TO HAVE THE ANSWERS?
Be HONEST with yourself! Haven't you just sort Of "DAYDREAMED" about "how" this and that might "possibly" have occurred -- but never subjected it to the cold light Of LOGIC and FACT?
Oh -- you've heard the many "arguments," of course. But just how really LOGICAL are they? One might counter, "But perhaps the ancestors of the platypus began by brief "excursions" into the edge of the water -- and, as their genetic makeup mutated they became more adept at finding food underwater, just naturally passed on these genetically "acquired characteristics" to their offspring! Perhaps it took MILLIONS OF YEARS Of developing platypuses to produce a "modern" platypus.
A nice daydream.
But it doesn't work. IF it were true, then the fossil record would be literally FILLED with the many, many "transitional" species that FINALLY gave rise to the platypus of today!
But there is no such fossil record.
Let's take a calm look at the facts as presented by the evolutionists themselves.
Mammals From Reptiles?
There are around three thousand, two hundred totally different species of mammals, varying in size from the two fifths of an ounce shrew to the 130-ton whale!
Zoologists, taxonomists, biologists, and a host of other specialists (the majority of whom are believers in some form of evolution), believe mammals developed from reptiles.
If the platypus is only a descendant, a REMNANT of a "LINK" between such vastly different creatures as reptiles and mammals, then where are the literally MILLIONS of fossil remains of the literally THOUSANDS of intermediate species going in both directions from such a "link," and where are all the other intermediate species from the "link" to the platypus himself?
Evolution remains silent to these questions -- admitting the fossil record to be "incomplete." But is it, REALLY? Or is the theory woefully inadequate? Which?
Mammals From Reptiles
Most zoologists, taxonomists, biologists don't believe mammals were created by God. They think mammals came from REPTILES.
The fact that there are around 3200 differing species doesn't bother them at all. The fact that they range in size from the shrew (weight: two fifths of an ounce dripping wet) to the 130 TON whale makes no difference to them.
But how and why do they conclude that mammals in general, and the platypus in particular evolved from reptiles?
Perhaps you didn't know this. But here's how evolutionists reason.
"The reptilian characteristics of the platypus led scientists to conclude that it is descended from a link between the reptiles and mammals of over 150 million years ago.
"At any rate, it is a highly specialized survivor of an ancient time." (Evolution, LIFE NATURE LIBRARY, p. 61.)
Another publication echoes the same idea:
"The monotremes, including the duck-billed platypus ... are TRANSITIONAL creatures with both reptilian and mammalian characteristics." (The Wonders of Life on Earth, Editors of Life, p. 167.)
A third book tells us the same thing:
"They [the platypuses] are not so close to the birds as they are to the reptiles, from which they are DESCENDED. We consider them the most primitive of living mammals ... all in all, they are strangely fashioned creatures, living symbols of the old and the new in the animal kingdom." (The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animal Life, Vol. 1, Frederick Drimmer, Editor-in-Chief, p. 25.)
The idea is advanced that a platypus is a TRANSITIONAL creature. Why is it considered so? Because, supposedly, it has both reptilian and mammalian features.
In other words, the less a mammal supposedly looks like a reptile, the MORE it has evolved. Since the platypus is considered to have MANY reptilian features, scientists say, "WE CONSIDER THEM primitive creatures!"
But let's stop a minute and analyze this idea.
Is a Comparison Proof?
Almost every "proof" of evolution is based on comparison. At one time comparative embryology was the BIG proof. Today, it's generally not in vogue to cite it as proof.
Too many problems have developed for evolution.
Today, comparative GENETICS and comparative blood characteristics are cited as "proof" of evolution.
The supposed evolutionary history of the horse is based on COMPARING the teeth, feet and vertebrae of various fossils. This is part of the system of comparative anatomy.
But what does it REALLY PROVE?
Nothing, by itself. All it might do is lend support to something ALREADY proved!
We have to cite a ludicrous example, but it demonstrates the point.
Today, New York City has huge skyscrapers with modern offices. These are filled with ultra-modern dictating machines, typewriters, computers. At the same time, there are very PRIMITIVE tribes using stone tools in Africa.
If an archaeologist of 3,000 A.D. were to dig up both cultures -- without knowing the facts -- he would claim the New York City culture came CENTURIES AFTER the African one.
But they are both contemporary.
In the same way, we see 50-story modem skyscrapers and one-story ramshackle huts -- in the SAME TOWN. But to say one evolved from the other is FOOLISH. We might say, "Why this is the science which we call comparative house development."
But we KNOW houses don't evolve by themselves. They are thought-out and planned by intelligent architects.
Obviously, we don't see the platypus evolving today. He's quite content to stay where he is.
Where could we find evidence, then, that the platypus evolved?
In just one place, the FOSSIL record.
But here is where the scientists begin to excuse themselves.
How Evolutionists Reason
Let's take a classic example, of how evolutionists reason. They present -- and ask you to believe -- that fantastic changes occurred. These are presented positively, scientifically. There is no hesitation.
But, then, a few pages later -- when we seek for PROOF in the fossil record (the only place we can find it) -- we get evasive answers.
Here's one example.
"The monotremes [the platypus and spiny anteater], however, still show reptilian features of bone structure in their hip and shoulder regions. Their legs are stubby like those of the early reptiles but, instead of sprawling out to the side, they are drawn in more under the body."
The quote continues -- and get this.
"Two large bones in the hinge of the reptilian jaw have SHRUNK MARVELOUSLY in mammals and MOVED BACK into the head to become the tiny 'hammer' and 'anvil' bones which transmit vibrations to the inner ear."
WOW!
Now, that's really something to bowl you over. "Fine," we say, "I'm not disagreeable, I've seen a lot of strange things. Prove to me this happened. Show me the fossil record."
Now, when you read such statements in books you ought to question in this manner yourself.
Can this author show us the fossil record with these startling changes?
Which "Leads" Do Evolutionists Follow?
What possible CLUES do evolutionists have, from the undeniable evidence of the fossils, and living creatures themselves, that a platypus evolved?
Let's find whether they follow the facts, or the reasoning of others ABOUT a few facts.
What does evolution say about the fossil record of the platypus? "UNHAPPILY, NO FOSSILS have yet been found in any continent which reveal the lineage of the monotremes [which includes the platypus] prior to the last few million years in Australia itself" (The Land and Wildlife of Australia, LIFE NATURE LIBRARY, David Bergamini, page 62, 65).
All fossil platypuses found look EXACTLY like "modern" platypuses.
So there are no leads in the fossils. And none among living creatures.
But, admits the author, zoologists have come to "general" agreement!
"Following the lead of the eminent evolutionary authority George Gaylord Simpson, however, zoologists generally agree, that the monotremes' ancestors must have branched from the pre-mammal stock and reached Australia at least 135 million years ago, perhaps even as long as 200 million years ago" (ibid).
Said another authority, "The platypus and its egg-laying cousins ... have altered but little in more recent geological times, as shown by the fact that NO PETRIFIED REMAINS have yet been unearthed to trace their ancestral evolution" (Furred Animals of Australia, Ellis Troughton page 1).
So -- there is NO proof from the fossil record, either in "recent" or in "ancient" times, regardless of the way in which it may be stated in various publications, that the platypus evolved at all!
Then how do evolutionists say they know it evolved?
Easy. They just say it.
You see, every untruth is based on a false premise that is always just carelessly ASSUMED,, and casually TAKEN FOR GRANTED. Once a person has rejected his God, and swallowed the idea that all living things evolved from some other living thing -- and that simple gave rise to complex, he fancies he sees certain "relationships" among them.
That he may be looking at a remarkable PATTERN -- a basic structural FRAMEWORK for ALL life forms that was thought out, and carefully PLANNED, by a Great CREATOR, DESIGNER, LIFE-GIVER never occurs to the evolutionist. Or, if it does occur to him -- it is quickly discarded.
The platypus is another of those serious obstacles to the evolutionary theory -- a living creature which has NO LIVING COUNTERPARTS, and NO CLOSE RELATIVES in the fossil record. Therefore, science calls this little creature a "living fossil."
In other words, the platypus, along with the cockroaches, cycads, and the now famous coelacanth, have been dubbed "living fossils" because evolution is forced to admit they have NEVER CHANGED. That is, that their fossil ancestors, IF ANY, (and in the case of the platypus, there are none!) are exactly the SAME as the living creatures.
So -- as far as the actual evidence goes, a platypus has ALWAYS BEEN a platypus -- that is, so far as actual EVIDENCE goes. But in the realm of speculation, all sorts of interesting pasts are assigned to this interesting little creature.
One book ascribes this great feat to the platypus:
"When the monotremes were cut off from the rest of the world they were just changing into mammals -- but they NEVER QUITE FINISHED" (Marvelous Mammals: Monotremes and Marsupials, Bernice Kohn, page 13).
Does This Make Sense?
The current idea today is that animals -- or whatever -- evolve in POPULATIONS. That is, certain groups within a genus or species can adapt to changing conditions. As they evolve, the rest of the members of that group DIE, because they can't adapt to new environmental conditions.
Applied to the platypus, it means that (according to evolutionists) as conditions changed, groups within the platypus tribe EVOLVED into other creatures.
Meanwhile, all the platypuses, who DIDN'T change into other mammals died out.
Do you see the problem?
We STILL HAVE the platypus with us today! They shouldn't have continued to exist -- but they do.
Of course, the evolutionist weakly tries to explain this away. The idea is that the monotremes and MARSUPIALS survived in Australia because it was cut off from the rest of the earth.
However, the opossum is a marsupial. But he also lives in the United States. Yet, this mammal does quite well among all the wild beasts. He doesn't see any need for evolving.
Building a Platypusary
Supposedly, some platypuses evolved over millions of years into other creatures. Supposedly, they were able to survive -- whole populations of them -- changes in environment over long periods.
But this doesn't stack up with what we can SEE with our eyes. As a matter of fact, a platypus is one of the MOST SENSITIVE creatures on earth.
This is proved by the countless attempts to keep platypuses alive apart from their native habitats.
For example, back in 1913, an animal dealer wanted to export a platypus to the New York Zoo. He approached Harry Burrell, who had great knowledge of the sensitive platypus.
"'The platypus man,' as he became known Muckbill Dave' to his friends) knew you couldn't send this fellow anywhere without sending his entire home -- or a reasonable facsimile.
"So straight off you need a water tank. To this must be added a series of passages and an enclosed living chamber resembling his burrow along which he can waddle just as if back on the Lower Woop-Woop creek.
"When he leaves the water he must have an entrance made on the principle of a washing-machine wringer ... taking all these factors into account, Burrell came up with a contraption which he called a platypusary. His ingeniously designed portable model permitted Mr. Platypus to go through the whole complicated ritual of feeding, exercising and drying off" (Walkabout, article "He's Just An Old Fossil," Kendrick Howard, page 15).
The first attempt at transport wasn't made until 1916. The animal survived one week. In 1922 another attempt was made. Out of five starters, only ONE platypus survived, for a time.
He died 49 DAYS later.
ONLY SEVEN of these strange creatures have ever been exported. All attempts to establish them beyond Australia have failed. One managed to stay alive ten years outside Australia. Another, one year.
But, today, if you want to see a platypus -- you have to go to Australia.
"Here, in this substitute hideaway, at Healesville, at least two of the egg-laying furred mammals continue publicly to DEFEAT TIME AND REFUTE EVOLUTION, while putting on a daffy act for visitors ... matinees, daily, 2-4:30 p.m." (Walkabout, "He's Just an Old Fossil," Kendrick Howard, page 15, May, 1967.)
"Refutes evolution"?
Whether the author really meant it or not -- that is EXACTLY WHAT the platypus does do!
Evolutionists claim that the platypus must have GRADUALLY evolved as his environment changed over millions of years. But only ONE -- as far as we know -- survived a change of environment more than one year, and died. He certainly didn't evolve in that short a stretch.
But, we are expected to believe that the platypus population survived MILLIONS of years as it was evolving into something else.
Even common sense should tell anyone this is impossible.
The creed of evolutionists is, "The PRESENT is the key to the past." That is, whatever you can observe today can show you what happened in the past.
In that case, the platypus is one more of the strong proofs that evolution DID NOT take place.
The Sensitive Platypus
David Fleay is a well-known individual who has worked extensively with the platypus. In the article, "Flight of the Platypus," for the National Geographic Magazine of October, 1958, he admitted this:
"For 25 years I have dealt with platypuses, and I have come to the conclusion that few members of the animal kingdom are so difficult to keep in captivity ... once caught, IT WILL SOON DIE if these [natural surroundings] are not duplicated.
"Along with this specialization, it has a nervous system EXCEEDINGLY WELL DEVELOPED for a beast with such primitive features.
"Subject the nocturnal platypus to too much noise, light, handling, keep it too wet or too dry, hold it in surroundings that do not remind it of home in the country -- the result can be panic, frantic rushing about, DEATH WITHIN 24 HOURS."
The platypus nervous system is so highly organized that specimens have been known to die in the hands of a captor as he was taking the creature out of a river.
The Highly Sensitive Nervous System
We've already seen in the quote above how the nervous system confuses those zoologists who think evolution is true.
The question is: Since the platypus is supposed to be such a primitive mammal WHY does he have such a well developed nervous system?
Not only that, but the BRAIN is too well developed for such a primitive beast, so reason evolutionists. But that doesn't do away with it.
Notice, one perplexed admission:
"The brain is SURPRISINGLY large -- much larger in proportion to the body weight than that of any reptile ... it cannot be said that the living monotremes are deficient in the extent of their cerebral hemispheres -- they are indeed MYSTERIOUSLY WELL ENDOWED with cerebral cortex.
"In the size and structure of its brain, then, the platypus proves to be an animal with a considerable degree of INTELLIGENCE, with a cerebrum better organized than that of the lower marsupials and even of some of the lower Monodelphia. A well-organized brain and a large surface of cerebral cortex indicate a degree of intelligence FAR REMOVED from that of reptiles" (The Platypus, Harry Burrell, page 63).
Oh, oh! Here's another problem. In order to be a direct link between mammals and reptiles, the beast has to be "primitive." But alas! His brain is WELL DEVELOPED.
How do you square that with evolution?
You don't.
And evolutionists ADMIT you can't.
"Many zoologists believe that since pre-mammal days the monotremes have evolved far less than other living mammals in their basic reproductive and skeletal structure ... this, surely, is most remarkable.
"Why, having once begun to enjoy the advantages of large brains and maternal care, were the monotremes not pushed on through the ages by the same forces of selection and survival that shaped the other mammals? ... this is one of the RECURRENT RIDDLES OF EVOLUTION and as yet there is no answer to it..." (The Land and Wildlife of Australia, David Bergamini and Editors of Life, LIFE NATURE LIBRARY, page 66).
Why can't evolutionists see?
The platypus has webbed feet because he needs them for swimming. He needs his beaver-like tail for stabilization. He needs the brain he has because of his highly sensitive nervous system -- especially his BILL! In turn, the platypus needs his bill to find food, and navigate underwater and build a burrow.
The platypus didn't evolve, as should be obvious.
The Platypus Bill
No article on the platypus would be complete without briefly discussing the marvelous platypus bill.
The bill of the platypus is one of the MOST SENSITIVE organs known. It is used in place of eyes when he hunts for food.
As the platypus dives into the water, he draws a layer of skin over both eyes and ears.
In the water, a platypus swings his bill from right to left. Apparently, he is able to find small water dwellers by their vibrations. Coupled with this is a magnificent sense of touch.
The platypus also seems to have an astounding awareness of cavities in the earth ahead. He can avoid breaking into rat holes, other platypus tunnels and even rabbit holes.
All this is done deep within the earth where the platypus eyes are of no value. The platypus can sense all this with his BILL. Truly, the platypus bill is one of the most remarkable pieces of radar on earth.
Talk about seeing through solid walls!
But the platypus also uses his bill for more mundane tasks.
The female uses her bill as a shovel when digging a burrow. As she digs, the soil that is dug out is tamped into the sides or the bottom by the bill.
Also, when the platypus swims, it uses its bill, which is pliable as rubber, to cut through the water like the prow of a boat.
Every part of the platypus takes its place in a COORDINATED function that makes the platypus one of the awe-inspiring creatures we see around US.
The platypus proves evolution cannot be true. He waves his bill at evolutionists in sad pity.
The platypus is one of the roadblocks that warns theorists, "Watch your ideas, you're heading down a blind alley!" Unfortunately, too many scientists have NOT HEEDED that warning.
But those of us who have the wit to see, ought to be able to understand from the creation around us, that GOD DOES EXIST.
And so is the dry land -- full of the wondrous works of God. And the duckbill platypus is among those works.
You live in a world of LAW and ORDER. The living plants, the life cycles, food chains in the sea, and in the very soil under your feet -- the living creatures that are so amazingly complex, so perfectly suited to their every task, and in such wondrous balance in this world of teeming life -- all follow definite patterns, fulfill definite, specific needs, and follow LAWS.
The only LAWLESS creature you know of in the whole lawful creation is MAN.
WHY such vanity-filled, insistent belief in evolution today? Simply because "natural selection" does not tell a scientist, or disillusioned, sarcastic young dupe in evolutionary study HOW TO LIVE.
Man wishes to be his own God.