Amazing Sea Creatures
From the beach, the ocean looks quiet and still as the sun sets. But, deep down in the water, the strangest most colorful creatures are showing off their incredible design. Some of these creatures, like a squid, have the ability to change their color, camouflaging them so that bigger creatures do not notice a tasty snack, while others, like an eel, can light up. Some have super-sensitive hearing, smelling, or vision. Water creatures, along with flying creatures, were created by God on the fifth day of creation week.
Jellyfish use something called nematocysts (pronounced nee-mat-o-sist) on their tentacles to sting fish that look tasty to them. Fossils of jellyfish have been found both in America and in Australia. You may be wondering how in the world could a jellyfish (whose body is 99 percent water and has skin thin enough to see through) turn to rock like a dinosaur bone. If jellyfish get left on the beach by a strong tide, they basically melt and lose their distinct forms. This means that jellyfish have to be buried alive in thick underwater mudslides, called turbidity currents, to be fossilized during the world-wide flood that the Bible talks about .
What Kind of Creature is That?
A very quirky animal lives in rivers in Australia. It hunts for food in the water, but makes burrows on the shore. It breathes air like you do, but can close its eyes, nose, and ears with special flaps while it swims. It has a beak like a duck, a tail like a beaver, and lays eggs like a chicken. They sometimes fight each other with poison spurs on their ankles. Also, they feed their babies with milk, have dark, thick, bristly fur on their back while the fur on the belly is soft and grey, and even use sonar to track their food underwater. This animal is a platypus, and the existence of animals like a platypus that have features from all different kinds of animals goes against the idea of evolution.
Sonar can be used by people to figure out how deep the ocean is and what other things are underneath ships. But the platypus had sonar for finding fish underwater long before people figured it out!
Trilobites (pronounced “try-low-bite”) used to swim around shallow water before Noah’s flood, but the world after the flood was much harder for these creatures to live in, and the trilobites died out. However, from fossils of trilobites, we can tell that they had extremely complicated eyes, which is a big problem for evolutionists because they believe that trilobites were some of the first creatures to live on earth. Scientists have also found many fossilized tracks of trilobites, and just like jellyfish, trilobite tracks have to be buried in mud very quickly to be made into a fossil. Fossil trilobites and trilobite tracks makes sense for creationists, but they don’t for evolutionists.
Dragons of the Sea
Plesiosaurs (pronounced “Please-ee-o-sore”) are often thought of as dinosaurs, but they are not, because dinosaurs live on the land and a plesiosaurus lives in the sea. Plesiosaur fossils were formed during the flood, but a few survived to live after the flood. In Job 41, the Bible talks in detail about a creature called Leviathan, which sounds a lot like a plesiosaur. Before Columbus sailed across the sea, many people were afraid to go so far out in the ocean because they had heard about dangerous sea dragons, which could very well have been creatures like plesiosaur.
Although most of them died during and after the flood, there might still be a few sea dragons like plesiosaur deep in the ocean somewhere.
Designed to Kill?
Many water creatures and just animals in general have special ways to hunt for food. People often wonder why God, Who is good and loving, would create animals with sharp teeth and other ways of hurting other creatures. When God first created animals and people, we just ate plants, no meat, and nothing died. Over and over during creation, God said that what He had created was good, there was no hurting or sadness. But, when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, the world changed, so that people and animals die today. Jesus took the punishment that we deserve, and if we let Him change our lives, He will take us to heaven when we die. He promises that there will be no more hurting, sadness, or dying, just like it was when He first created us.
Thoughts From ReadersCCK is written by Sara J. Bruegel. If you have a question or comment, please write to Sara at: email@example.com and it may get published in the next issue. Also, you can visit www.CreationClues.com to read a new clue each week or read past issues of CCK. Cartoon drawn by Eliza Haley.
“How does a platypus see to hunt underwater?” ~ Nathan B., Age 10
Nathan, the platypus has skin that covers its eyes while it is underwater, similar to goggles or a second eyelid. When the platypus is on land, their special eyelids go back so that they can see well. The platypus can’t see very well underwater through this special skin, so they use their beak to find food. God created the beak of the platypus so that it is very sensitive and can easily find food underwater.
Originally published April-June 2013. Digitally reformatted November 2014. Copyright Sara J. Bruegel. Used with permission.