Sonar – Part 5

For a few months now, we’ve reviewed the wonder of echolocation in animals. We conclude the series this month by discussing echolocation in humans. Can a person actually “see” by sound alone? For centuries it has been known that certain blind people gain information about their environment by snapping their fingers, tapping the floor with […]

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March 2, 2023
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Sonar – Part 4

In recent months we have been discussing echolocation in animals. This month we come to the marvelous use of this navigation technique in water…true sonar. Sound travels 5X faster in water than in air, making it particularly useful for whales and dolphins These mammals echolocate via a specialized organ called the dorsal bursae, which sits […]

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February 1, 2023
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Sonar – Part 3

Last month, we discussed the incredible precision of bat echolocation. I want to talk just a bit more about these amazing nocturnal flyers that “see” by listening to echoes. If you look up into the sky on a warm summer evening you will likely see many bats flitting about. How do they distinguish their echo […]

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January 1, 2023
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Sonar – Part 2

Last month, we began a new series on echolocation in animals. Active sonar involves an animal emitting a sound wave that bounces off a distant object, returning an echo that provides information about the object’s proximity and size. Over a thousand animal species use sonar. They mostly rely on echolocation to find food in an […]

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December 1, 2022
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Sonar – Part 1

This month, we start a new series on sound navigation and biology. The word sonar is an acronym for SOund Navigation And Ranging. Active sonar, emitting sounds and analyzing the returning echo, is primarily employed by people to navigate, measure distances, and detect objects in the water. The first recorded human sonar use was in 1490, […]

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November 1, 2022
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The Wadjet

For many years I have been fascinated by flying serpent iconography in ancient Egypt. The Genesis Park website had featured a couple of these ancient depictions. This flying snake (or Wadjet in the original Egyptian) was an important symbol of lower Egypt. Numerous ancient authors mention serpents flying from Arabia into this northern region of […]

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October 3, 2022
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The Egyptian Exodus

Although I primarily work with scientific apologetics material, there are occasionally significant archaeological finds that bear mentioning. Progress in recent years at a dig site in northern Egypt, called Tell-el-Daba, is one of those special cases. This location appears to match the ancient city of Avaris, capital of the Hyksos Dynasty. The Hyksos were a foreign people […]

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September 2, 2022
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Blushing

Blushing is defined as the reddening of the face from blood rushing to the skin’s blood vessels, usually associated with feelings of embarrassment or shame. The origin of blushing has long been an evolutionary enigma, because no animals are known to blush. This origin problem bothered Darwin and he acknowledged that there is no real […]

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August 1, 2022
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Blind Cave Fish

In recent months, we have discussed how certain biological adaptations happen very quickly and appear to be more like engineered, organism-driven systems than happenchance mutations. An article in this month’s CRS Journal highlights yet another fascinating example. Sometimes fish are swept into a cave by a large wave or a flood. It has been known […]

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July 3, 2022
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Adaptation – Part 4

In recent months we’ve been discussing the ability of animals to adapt to their environment in a rapid fashion, quicker than scientists had previously thought. A 2018 article in Nature was entitled: “How warp-speed evolution is transforming ecology: Darwin thought evolution was too slow to change the environment on observable timescales—ecologists are discovering that he […]

Posted on
March 23, 2022
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Adaptation – Part 3

The title of a 2008 article by National Geographic article caught my eye: “Lizards Rapidly Evolve After Introduction to Island.” The fascinating article explained how scientists were surprised in recent years just how quickly whole suites of genetic traits can be changed, almost like a cascading switch was thrown. Insectivore Italian Wall Lizards were transported […]

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March 1, 2022
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Adaptation – Part 2

Last month we began a new series on adaptation, the process of organisms becoming better fitted for the environment around them. The stock explanation given by an evolutionary biologist is that natural selection acts upon heritable variation over multiple generations. By it’s very definition, this is a slow process. Tiny genetic changes, a small percentage […]

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February 2, 2022
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