The Seahorse’s Tail Baffles Darwinian Explanations

The seahorse has a tail that baffles Darwinian explanations. Image courtesy of Mohammed Al Momany, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.





Joel Kontinen

The seahorse’s tail is an enigmatic organ. It is both flexible and rigid. With it, the tiny sea animal can do some of the things an elephant would do with its trunk.

A recent report in Science Daily states:

“These prehensile tails combine the seemingly contradictory characteristics of flexibility and rigidity, and knowing how seahorses accomplish this feat could help engineers create devices that are both flexible and strong.”

Although the report does not acknowledge it, the tail seems to be a design feature:

“Seahorses use their strong and flexible tails to anchor themselves to plants and other materials on coral reefs or the sea floor, allowing them to hide from predators.”

Once again, there is something better in the animal kingdom than what engineers have been able to create.

The science of copying intelligent solutions seen in nature is called biomimicry.

Intelligent solutions suggest that there is intelligence behind it all. From a Christian perspective that is exactly what we would expect to see.

You can read more about biomimicry here, here, here, here, here and here.

Source:

Secrets of the seahorse tail revealed. Science Daily, March 31, 2015.