By Rabbi Shmuel Waldman
Off hand, beavers may not seem to be so fascinating, however we will show that they certainly are very fascinating!!
I will just mention three amazing facts although there are many, many more amazing facts to mention about these very unique creatures. What I will mention now about beavers is even if a beaver was removed from its parents at birth, growing up lacking any parental guidance or any other guidance.
The building capability of beavers is extraordinary. The build watertight dams. It’s very challenging to make anything watertight. They knock down trees with their special teeth, and use them for their building needs. They know how to make use of mud, sticks, branches, rocks and boulders so well that they can stop running water from an upstream river (a dam)! That takes a lot of knowhow and skill, that there’s no way in the world a beaver could acquire by accident. Then they build in middle of a body of water, an above water level lodge for them to live in throughout the year. It has an underwater entrance thereby keeping out predators. It provides plenty of warmth and shelter from the elements. As one book puts it: ‘They go about their tasks like experienced craftsman”! Their building skills are far superior than any other animal. But here’s the clincher. You see, if there’s bad weather and the dam gets damaged and water starts to overflow the dam, or some other damage occurs, then the beavers go over to fix it. They survey the damage and figure out the best way to fix it. That takes tremendous knowledge in hydro-engineering. And as the same book states: “A skilled hydro-engineer could not regulate the water level any better”. (Animal Architecture by Karl von Frisch) So here you have this accident beaver that is as smart as any hydro-engineer, without needing to go study any courses in college to get such a high level of knowledge. That’s surely NOT an accident. Its complicated instincts planted into their brains by the Great Programmer!
Bats
Let me tell you about another amazing accident: the bat.11 Do you know how blind bats get around? (Not all bats are blind, but many are.) Believe it or not, “by accident” they developed a radar system. (If you live in a dark cave long enough, perhaps you, too, will evolve your own radar.) A radar system, called echolocation, enables them to avoid obstacles, and it helps them locate food. High-pitched sounds emitted by an insect-eating bat (which humans can’t hear), are sent out at a rate of 200 per second; they hit the objects in front of the bat and then they bounce back to the bat. The bat’s brain, with supersonic speed, is able to analyze these high-pitched sounds as they bounce back to it, and it can tell exactly where, and exactly what, that object is. All in about half a second!
Now, imagine a bat flies into a lecture hall and sends out its radar, which hits a tape recorder. The echo bounces back and the bat says to itself: “Oh, there’s something there.” Immediately, it nose-dives and attempts to take a big chunk out of the tape recorder. It would be in big trouble because it would break its teeth. But, don’t worry. Built into the bat’s brain, by accident of course, is the ability to tell by the way the radar echoes back to it exactly where and what that object is. Somehow it knows that a tape recorder is not a soft banana. (Bats like bananas.)
How an “accident” could develop such an amazing system is your guess as well as mine.
The fact that a radar system developed “by accident” in one species is really impossible according to naturalistic explanations. However, we find that whales also have the same type of system and whales are completely unrelated to bats, i.e., no one suggests that one evolved from the other. Imagine, twice this “accident” happened! And, believe it or not, there are even scientists who say that seals, which are a completely different species from whales, also developed this complicated system by accident. How can this accident happen three times in three separate species?!
Obviously, there are so many mysteries and miracles in the plant and animal kingdoms it is presumptuous to stop here. However, this book is not meant to be an encyclopedia on these topics, so let’s move on.
THE SEAHORSE
The sea horse really is not a fish at all. The only resemblance to fish is the fact that they live in water all their lives and have gills with which to get their oxygen from the water. Otherwise, there’s no connection from fish to seahorses. They are a specie all by themselves. They stand upright. Their outer skin is wrapped tightly around a uniquely shaped very bony skeleton. Their flesh is below their skeleton as opposed to regular fish that under their outer skin is their flesh and then it has its skeleton in middle of the flesh. It has a long tail like a chameleon (what fish have long tails?) and a pouch for their eggs like a kangaroo, (what fish have pouches for anything?) and what fish has a head with a snout and a neck that looks like a horse!! It wraps its tail around vegetation that grows far down in the water and that’s pretty much where they hang out most of the time. The male seahorse is the one to carry the eggs in HIS pouch. The eggs are placed in the pouch of the male and a few weeks later hundreds of baby seahorse leave his pouch!! There’s no connection to fish at all. It’s completely different than any fish. It’s an absolute miracle. It’s unique beyond words. Surely, this too is NOT an accident.
MILLIONS OF EXAMPLES – PLANT DEFENSES
One last example of MILLIONS!! That’s NOT an exaggeration. MILLIONS of examples!!
Did you know that plants “know” that insects are attacking them and “therefore” they “decided” that they must develop special chemicals to protect themselves from the insect attack? Each plant has its own special “formula” to fight off the insects. (Many exterminating companies have made insect pesticides by studying how these accidental plant pesticides work!) HOW in the world can a plant “understand” it’s being attacked? How can it understand ANYTHING??? It has NO BRAIN AT ALL. Even if it “understood” it was being attacked, how would it be able to figure out a complex chemical counter attack that actually works?????? These are questions that have no answer without admitting that a GREAT WISE CREATOR set it up for each plant.
Insects have their very varied camouflages and strong chemical protections against other predator insects. Large books have been written about many of them. It’s absolutely amazing! No accidents can account for such planning, wisdom, and the ability to actually create the necessary chemical makeup for these working “pesticides” and the special apparatus needed to release those nasty chemicals that were necessary to be created by accident as well. So, I am not exaggerating when I say that there’s millions of examples of Hashem’s wonders in His glorious creation.
But one last-lick knockout punch. The electric eel.
THE ELECTRIC EEL
Many scientists have been amazed at how an accident can know how to generate electricity. It’s one amazing thing to even come up with just the concept of electricity as a means of attacking and repelling predators and as a means of stunning fish and then being able to eat them, [of course, an accident can’t come up with any concept] but it’s a whole other amazement to actually be able to create the necessary apparatus with which to create a working strong electric current to turn on and off at will. The electric eel can generate at will multiple shocks as high as 680 volts. That can knock a person over. One big allegator bit an electric eel and in about 20-30 seconds it electrocuted this big allegator to death. An accident. Give me a break!
There’s no end to such examples in nature. G-d put them in nature on purpose so that we can recognize Him and His Greatness. This is necessary so that we have the proper respect and awe of Him, which will help us grow in our service of G-d.
About the author:
Rabbi Shmuel Waldman has an extended career as a religious educator, which included a variety of occupations.
He published a book in 2002 Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: Convincing Evidence to the Truths of Judaism. The book has been in high demand ever since and is considered a classic in the field of kiruv.
He taught 4th and 7th grade at Yeshiva Tifereth Moshe Elementary School in Queens for eleven years. Rabbi Waldman influenced many hundreds of students over twenty years by teaching at a few summer camps.