Sea Snakes Replay Peppered Moth Story

Some sea snakes, such as the Blue-lipped sea krait, Laticauda laticaudata, have not turned black. Image courtesy of Jon Hanson, CC-BY-SA-2.0.





Joel Kontinen

The peppered moth (Biston betularia) is one of the most famous icons of evolution, together with Darwin’s finches.

These icons share a common trait: tiny changes that didn’t last very long.

Now, a paper published in the journal Current Biology features another case of industrial melanism.

Rick Shine at the University of Sydney and colleagues found that the turtle-headed sea snake (Emydocephalus annulatus) is turning black due to pollution.

Reporting on the story, New Scientist says:

“The group already knew that pollutants such as arsenic or lead can bind to melanin, a dark pigment in the skin, and they wondered whether this might explain the black snakes. To find out, they collected and analysed the skins naturally shed by these snakes in industrial and non-industrial waters. The sea snakes typically shed – or slough – their skin a few times a year.”

The NS story goes on to say:

“Looking at 17 sloughs, Shine’s group found that the concentrations of 13 trace elements – particularly cobalt, manganese, lead, zinc and nickel – were higher in snakes near urban areas, and higher in darker skin. Shine says similar concentrations of those trace elements have been reported to cause severe health problems in many domesticated species, from cattle to poultry.

What’s more, Shine’s group found that the black sea snakes shed their skins twice as often as their lighter counterparts. This suggests that the black sea snakes are, indeed, adapting to deal with the pollution in the water they inhabit – both by developing skin with a better capacity to bind potentially harmful trace elements, and by shedding that skin more often to reduce the trace element load they must deal with.”

Instead of invoking evolution, a more credible explanation would rely on design. Sea snakes were designed with the ability to survive in hazardous environments.

This reminds us of the ability of many animal species to adapt to new challenging environments after the year-long global flood of Noah’s days.

Source:

Woodward, Aylin. Sea snakes are turning black in response to industrial pollution. New Scientist (10 August).

The Assumed Ape To Man Evolution is a Flimsy Story

Image courtesy of José-Manuel Benito Álvarez, Wikipedia.



Joel Kontinen

First there was a story that lacked evidence. Then there were attempts to fit the evidence into a predetermined framework. The result is not very convincing since Darwinian evolution does not have a mechanism that would lift an ape-like creature to walk on two feet and make him into a man capable of using language fluently.

What do fossils disclose about human evolution? Not very much. Although there is no scarcity of fossils there are very few assumed remains of our supposed forefathers.

In his book Icons of Evolution (2000), Jonathan Wells, who has a PhD in molecular and cell biology, criticised the assumed evidence for evolution. He pointed out that it was very flimsy and misleading.

On a fresh video he says that nothing much has changed in ten years. Darwinian evolution does not work:




Natural selection and mutations do not increase an organism’s genetic information. In other words, animals cannot evolve from simpler forms into more sophisticated ones.

Ten years ago: Icons of Evolution caused distress in the Darwinian camp

The book that challenged Darwinian icons.




Joel Kontinen

In Icons of Evolution, a book published in 2000, Jonathan Wells, who has a PhD in molecular and cell biology, showed that the most usual textbook proofs of evolution were misleading.

The Darwinian icons speak more of the evolutionists’ willingness to believe their theory than of anything else. They do not support evolution.

Wells discusses Archaeopteryx, Miller and Urey’s origin of life experiment, Darwin’s tree of life, homology (similar structures in different species), Haeckel’s embryo drawings, the peppered moth, Darwin’s finches, fruit fly mutants and man’s assumed origins in his book.

Icons of Evolution caused many evolutionists to become nervous It showed that their best proofs were anything but convincing.