Creation Spotlight
Bats - God's Squeaking Night Flyers
Dracula, Nesferatu, vampires, all portrayals of bats that have given
them a bad name. In reality, although bats are not cute, cuddly
creatures, they are extremely beneficial animals and a remarkable
example of God’s biological engineering.
Blind
as a bat is a common, but not really accurate, statement about a bat’s
vision. Most bats have good vision, but rely on a radar like sense
called echolocation. Echolocation occurs when bats let out high-pitched
squeaks. The sound then bounces off an object and echoes back to the
bat giving it information about the size, shape, identity and direction
of flight of the object. Using echolocation, a bat can locate objects
as thin as a human hair. Echolocation is a remarkable example of
biological engineering. Bats are capable of using it to navigate in
total darkness. Echolocation is one of the many aspects of bats that
stymies any evolutionary story of its development. Any evolutionary
story would have to be able to explain how both the sound producing
organ and the sound-receiving organ could have evolved at exactly the
same time. Also these organs would also have had to have been fully
functional from the beginning, for of what value is an organ that
almost sends a signal or an organ that almost receives it. Echolocation
is a feature shared by dolphins, seals and several species of birds. It
is a trait that evolutionists would like people to believe somehow
evolved completely independently in very dissimilar animals.
There are almost 1000 species of bats around the world. While bats eat
a variety of foods, 70% of them eat insects. Because of the energy
required for flight, bats have to eat a lot of food and some will eat
more than their weight in food each day. 20% of bats are fruit eaters
and only one species, it lives in Latin America, is a vampire that
drinks the blood of large animals.
Flight is another aspect of bats that evolutionists can’t invent any
plausible stories for. Four types of animals were created that were
capable of flight; bats, birds, insects and pterosaurs (flying
reptiles). Evolutionists would have people believe that flight evolved
independently four separate times, when they can’t even begin to
explain how even one of these animals could have developed the multiple
features necessary for flight.
Bats come in a variety of sizes from smaller than a penny to six feet
across and are chummy to the extreme. Many bat colonies are in the
millions and a 4-inch by 6-inch by 2-inch bat house can hold 100 bats.
Bats are also a vital part of many ecosystems. Insect eating bats
consume millions of insects every night. Many people put out bat houses
to encourage these natural insect controllers to live near them. Fruit
eating bats both pollinate plants and spread seeds in tropical rain
forests.
Many bats have become extinct and others endangered because of
indiscriminate killing. Like so many things in God’s Creation, people
often destroy what they don’t understand, but bats were designed by God
to be a part of His Creation. Bats are just one, of the many examples,
of God’s biological engineering that cannot be explained by
evolutionary fairy tales.
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof;
the world, and they that dwell therein.
Psalm 24:1
