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» Amazing Creatures
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» Flying on Instruments
» Outboard Motor
» The Amazing Cell
» Nature's Game
» Horrendous Complexity
» The Humble Eyelid
» the Chessmaster
» the Origin of Life
» Search for Alien Life
» Elephant in the Room
» Greetings from The Cosmos
» The Atom
» Center of the Universe
» the Light is Good
» the Mask of Nature
» Divine wisdom vs Human Wisdom
» the Nature of Reality
» Mysterious World of PLants
» Almost a Miracle
» The Bite of Rationalism
» The March of Science
» Afterword
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** Yet more Amazing Creatures **
"the study of the other species of living creatures, their habits and their sustenance will not be concealed by one who observes them and reflects upon the marks of divine wisdom manifest in them" - Shaar Bechina ch.5

Owls have a satellite dish built into their face. The circular pattern of feathers acts as a dish, channelling sounds into the ears. More strangely, those feather patterns can also be individually adjusted to increase reception. The owl also has assymetrical ear opening height allowing them to detect the height from which sound is coming from. The owls' ears are linked to specialized cells contained within a discrete region of the midbrain. Each cell is sensitive to a unique combination of time and intensity differentials and responds only to sound issuing from one small area in space. The owl's brain thus contains a "neural map" of auditory space [1]. Once a sound is detected, the owl orients toward it and accurately pinpoints its location to within 1.5 degrees in both horizontal and vertical planes. Basically, an owl can hear a mouse stepping on a twig from 100 feet away. The bird can make in-flight course corrections to strike at its victim. And keep in mind, we're talking about a nocturnal hunter - they're using this finely tuned sense of hearing to hunt prey that they can't even see. Owls also happen to have special serrated feathers rather than smooth, which has the effect of disrupting the flow of air over the wing in flight and eliminating the vortex noise created by airflow over a smooth surface. Thus equipped, owls arrive upon their prey without a sound like a stealth fighter. Furthermore, they have the lowest wing-loading ratio of any bird, meaning they can fly extremely slow if they need to, or carry large loads. see it here

The Immortal Jellyfish has a unique ability to avert death by reverting to its juvenile state near the end of its life. The tentacles retract, their bodies shrink, and they sink to the ocean floor and start the life cycle all over again. They can rejuvenate like this indefinitely thereby exhibiting a certain form of biological immortality.

Pit Vipers have extremely sensitive infrared detecting organs, which in effect give them a sixth sense to help them find prey. Having one of these organs on either side of the head produces a stereo effect that indicates distance, as well as direction. Experiments have shown, when deprived of their senses of sight and smell, these snakes can strike accurately at moving objects less than 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the background. The paired pit organs would seem to provide the snake with thermal rangefinder capabilities. Its accuracy sometimes is 0.0002%. These specialized organs supposedly arose multiple times independently in species of vipers, boas, and pythons.

Velvet worms immobilize their prey by shooting a fast-drying glue-like substance out of glands in their heads which lassos their prey. see it here

Bears such as the Silvertip Grizzly are thought to have the best sense of smell of any animal on earth. It is 7 times better than a bloodhound's, which in turn is 300 times better than a human's. Hence, the bear's sense of smell is 2100 times better than a human's. They also have highly developed noses that contain hundreds of tiny muscles which lets them manipulate their noses with the same dexterity as people's fingers [src]. The surface area inside their 9 inch noses also has hundreds of times more surface area and receptors than a human's and their part of the brain which manages smell is 5 times larger than a humans' despite their smaller brain. A bear's sense of smell is so acute that they can detect animal carcasses even upwind and from a distance of 20 miles away. Basically, the bear knows who walked down the path last night at 11pm, what the soles of their shoe was made of, who they were with, what food they ate, etc. When a Silvertip tracks your steps, you're finished. Even if you have a 2 day head start, you will be emitting a light house trail for the bear to follow until you get tired. see it here

The Elephantnose Fish has a probe on its chin which generates an electric field that becomes distorted by nearby objects. The electrical charge is generated on a special organ in the fish's tail, then measured by sensors in its probe. These sensors are so advanced that they can differentiate exact shapes, materials, sizes, volumes and distances (within millimeters) [2]. As it sweeps the ocean floor, the fish can even "sense" if the buried microscopic insects it detects are dead or alive by measuring their ability to store charges. see it here

Bees have the most complex language out of any animal. They have a unique dance-based sign language. Through their waggling and shaking which consists of one to 100 or more figure eight circuits, scouts can report the distance and direction to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new housing locations, etc. They also explain about the terrain, whether the area is dangerous, and how rich is the food source. The bees are able to triangulate as well as a civil engineer. The directions are accurate to within about 15 feet. Researchers attached antennas on a few bees to track them through radar to confirm this. Bees also use a voting system to determine certain decisions of the hive. They are also hypersensitive to electricity and use it in lots of unique and amazing ways. Bees' wing flapping builds up a static electricity field which gives them navigation ability and many other amazing uses. When they enter a flower the pollen zaps onto them, and they leave a charge on the flower to let other bees know they were there. Some researchers have even concluded that bees are sensitive to electricity all the way down to the quantum mechanical level. Bees also have a small ring of magnetite particles, magnetic granules of iron, inside their abdomen to detect the magnetic field of the Earth for navigation. see the bee waggle dance see it here

The Cave Fish lives in pitch black underwater caves. They have no eyes but a super sense of touch and can "feel" walls, rocks, and obstacles all around them. The cavefish does this by using a unique navigation system. It generates high frequency suction waves with its mouth and then uses these vibrations to measure the distance to objects or other fish nearby. Researchers have found that the cavefish don't measure time with the waves as in echolocation, but rather the way in which pressure magnitude is changed. By feeling the resulting field of pressure changes around them, they can build up a map of what is around them as a kind of extended sense of touch. After mapping out its surroundings the cavefish reduces the frequency of its suction waves relying on memory [3]. The cavefish also passively gathers information produced by body waves when they swim through water. Both navigation methods are used in tandem, similar to how submarines rely on both active and passive sonar. see it here

Electric Eel normally water and high voltage don't mix, but these creatures have special cells called "electrocytes" that effectively turn them into batteries. The eels use these electric organs to sense foreign objects and smaller fish that might make a good meal. To feed, they will deliver small shocks to fish, rendering their victims paralyzed. When they sense a threat, they can generate about 600 volts of electricity to the predator, which knocks most enemies dead. The standard U.S. wall outlet only carries about 110 volts. Because its "adaptation" is so epically weird, taxonomists decided it has to be the only species in its entire genus. see it here

The Mimic Octopus can change its shape, size, and color to take on the characteristics of more than 15 different types of marine life to camouflage itself or ward off prey. Watch it scuddling on the ocean floor looking something like a furry turkey with human legs here.
Other species of octopus have specialized skin cells which change not only their coloring, but also the texture of their skin to match rocks, corals and other items nearby, creating textures ranging from small bumps to tall spikes. The result is a disguise that makes them nearly invisible. Their skin is essentially like a 3D television screen. see it here

The Pipe Fish have a highly modified skeleton formed into armored plating. This dermal skeleton has several longitudinal ridges, so a vertical section through the body looks angular, not round or oval as in the majority of other fishes. Watch this and other incredible underwater masters of disguise here

The Wood Frog is able to withstand being frozen solid - and then thaw out again as if nothing had happened. The wood frog stops breathing and its heart stops beating entirely for days to weeks at a time. What's more, the frog is likely to endure multiple freeze/thaw episodes over the course of a winter. Normally living cells sustain damage when frozen. But when the wood frog feels ice forming on its skin, its liver produces special sugars which are pumped into the cells in place of water. Since the sugars won't lose shape when frozen, the cells are not damaged by being frozen. The water from the cells is pumped out and deposited on the frog's skin to form an icy suit of armor to protect the frog. While other animals take time and effort to hibernate, this frog can sit back and let nature take its course. see it here

Bear Hibernation During the 5-7 months of hibernation a bear does not eat, drink, defecate, or even urinate. It essentially enters a mode of conservation, efficiency and recycling. For months on end the bear doesn't consume any fluids all the while never becoming dehydrated (despite that the bear loses considerable water via the moisture in its exhaled breath) which would obviously normally kill any animal. However, the bear hibernation physiology allows it to get all the water it needs from the metabolization of fat. Water is a byproduct of fat metabolization and the bear is able to use this water to supply all of its fluid requirements. Their kidneys shut down almost completely and urea, a major component of urine, is recycled into proteins that maintain a bear's muscle mass and organ tissues. Without the ability to recycle urea, ammonia would build up to toxic levels and poison the animal.

The Blue Whale is the largest known animal ever to have lived on Earth; it is larger than any of the giant dinosaurs were. The biggest recorded blue whale was a female in the Antarctic Ocean that was 30.5 m long (more than 3.5times the length of a double-decker bus and as long as a Boeing 737 plane) with an estimated weight of 144 tonnes (almost the same as 2,000 men!). The tongue alone of a blue whale can weigh as much as an elephant and an entire football team could stand on it! The heart of a blue whale is about the size of a VW Beetle car and weighs up to 1000 pounds. The aorta, a major blood vessel for the heart, is big enough for a human child to crawl through. [4]. The call of the blue whale reaches levels up to 188 decibels and can travel thousands of miles across the ocean. see it here

Gannets are seabirds with amazing hunting habits. They fly high and swoop down crashing into the water face-first at speeds of up to 145KMH (90MPH). To protect itself from becoming a meal to the fish it is trying to catch, it has an extra-thick helmet-like skull that is able to withstand impact. The bird also has special safety airbags in its face, chest, and shoulders which can be inflated at will to absorb impacts that would kill just about any other animal. see it here

The Human Brain is the most complex and least understood organ in the human body. It is about 3 times larger than that of the great apes and much more advanced. It has about 10 billion neuron cells. Each neuron cell sprouts a vast dendritic tree ending in 100,000 branches to contact other neuron cells. That's a total of 1015 connections. If you had a forest that covered half of the USA, all the leaves in those trees would be about 1015 leaves. That's how many connections there are in the human brain. That's way more than all the connections in the phone and internet systems on the entire planet - and those connections are not random. The neurons connect to other very specific neurons to get certain results and effects. They have to connect correctly. Computer scientists worldwide are currently nowhere near getting anywhere close to making a supercomputer which can have a basic intelligent conversation remotely like a human being (that one feels he is conversing with an "intelligent personality"). A computer can be programmed to calculate chess moves or the like but such things as rational thought and intelligent speech are a whole different ball game. The power consumption of the brain is only about 20 Watts and its resilient parallel network architecture can withstand deaths of many millions of nodes (neurons).

Michael Denton writes in Nature's Destiny (pg.258): "Furthermore, the neuron and its dendritic tree is not a mere frozen network of silicon threads but a living, ever changing network, learning, reacting, responding, and integrating a vast number of different electronic and chemical signals. In the words of a recent Nature reviewer, 'the latest work on information processing and storage at the single-cell level reveals previously unimagined complexity and dynamism. We are left with a feeling of awe for the amazing complexity found in nature. Loops with loops across many temporal and spatial scales'".

The development of the fetus is the most advanced system known in the universe. It magnifies its size in only a few weeks or months million-folds and more. It self-organizes into some 10 trillion specialized cells. What system known in reality is able to do so only with mother's food and air digested and moved through the blood. Nothing like it even a tiny bit 1000 times exists anywhere ever, such brilliant ability to magnify a structure by such an enormous factor - all autonomously in the womb, such sophistication and wisdom of Creation. See below video where a university professor of neurology marvels at the sophistication of the assembly of the neural network in the human brain. The underlying wisdom it exhibits is so mind boggling and so incredibly complex that the professor can only call it a "miracle". see it here



>> Next: Amazing Plants

Footnotes