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The Arrow-Poison Frog
Mother Extraordinare
The Arrow-poison frogs of Central and South America are very unusual creatures. Not only has God created them with the ability to produce a toxic substance from their skin, which is most amazing in itself, but has made them the most extraordinary of parents.
In one species it is the mother that is the very attentive parent, and in another the father takes on the parenting duties. This article will concentrate on the mother.
The female Arrow-poison frog of the South American jungle goes to great lengths to ensure the survival of her young. She lays her eggs on the undersides of leaves where they develop in the humid climate. When the egg develops into a tadpole, she returns and allows it to crawl onto her back and then sets off to find a pool of water. After selecting the rosette of leaves that traps the pool of water, she backs in and allows the tadpole to wiggle off where it will continue development. Every few days she will revisit the pool and lay a couple of unfertilized eggs which the tadpole will eat if no other food is available. Even though she may have a dozen or more, the mother will regularly visit each pool of water where she has a developing baby and carefully monitor its progress.
How does the frog know how to do this? Where does she get the information? How does she find the eggs or tadpoles again after first laying them? All these mysteries will go unanswered because only the Creator knows for sure.
The Marvelous Mosquito
One of the least favorite visitors at a summer evening picnic is probably the common mosquito. The irritating buzzing sound as it passes your ear on the way to feast on the blood coursing through your neck, can set off a frenzy of swatting and spraying of bug repellent. After you have been used as supper by this lowly insect, the mildly painful and itching bite inflicted is more of a nuisance than an injury. And yet, while we may have a total disdain for this blood eating creature, the method she (in many species only the female eats blood) uses to obtain her food shows a marvelously thought out plan designed by God for her survival.
The feeding apparatus in this insect is not a kind of basic tube or hypodermic needle, but an exquisitely made piece of biological machinery. It is in this structure that God shows his wisdom of design. If the female mosquito is to feed she must first overcome a formidable barrier--the skin. This multi-layered structure of dead cells stand in the way of a tasty meal. To get through the skin, the mosquito has been created with a unique proboscis. This micro find structure has two tubes, one that goes into the digestive system, and one for the salivary canal, that goes out. On the side of the proboscis are finely serrated edges for piercing the skin. This whole structure is enclosed in a protective sheath when not in use. This arrangement of seven different structures is so complex that it staggers the imagination. This does not take into account the complexity of how the mosquito actually finds you to begin with, or the complex actions needed to take the blood into the body without clotting the proboscis.
The question to be answered is, "How did the first mosquito develop these things correctly, by random accident or trial and error, before it died of starvation? Obviously it did not. When fossils are found of mosquitoes they are completely equipped with a perfectly formed feeding apparatus. This is exactly what we would predict, for God created instantly the lowly mosquito.
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