Slap Stick Comedy...

One animal that has extraordinary engineering abilities is the beaver. The beaver is able to chew down trees and dam entire rivers! It plays the role of a keystone member of a ecosystem; that is, it basically makes the ecosystem run. If the beaver didn't make its dam, there wouldn't be a wetland there. The dams of the beaver form a large area for flood waters to be absorbed in and basically protect the area from erosion and other harmful effects. Additionally, the dam is home to the beaver and protects it from predators. Did God give the beaver incredible ability and design to enable it to be an essential part of the ecosystem in such an amazing way!

More sweet info:
Wikipedia
Cool pics and info
All about beavers

Radar Operator to the Max

Bats are really fascinating creatures! When they fly around at night, they emit high-pitched sounds and listen to the echoes of the sounds like radar on a plane! This sweet technology lets bats locate insect flying in the air at night and also avoid obstacles. In this way, a bat can eat 300 bugs an hour including mosquitoes, moths and other pesky insects. God did an amazing job designing the bat, the only flying mammal, to allow it to fly without running into things, eat lots of annoying bugs, and make life more comfortable for us.

Linkses:
Wikipedia

Bat Conservation

Bat Myths

Victory Formation

Have you ever looked up into the fall sky and wondered why all the migrating geese are flying in a nice V pattern? Why didn't they pick a letter like an S instead? Well, the reason lies in the fact that these birds work together. When they are flying, they can travel 72% farther if they fly in the V formation because of the lift that they provide for each other with their flapping. If the goose in the lead gets tired, it drops back further in the formation to get the lift from the birds in front of it. Furthermore, the geese in the back quack to encourage the forward geese. God created the geese well to know how to fly to optimize their effectiveness and also gave us an example of working together and encouragement that we can bring into our own lives.

Fun Fascinating Facts:
Wikipedia
Creation Tips

King of the Jungle Reef

A beautiful and amazing fish that looks like it's straight out of Finding Nemo is the lionfish. The lionfish is brightly colored to advertise its poisonous spines. Therefore, predators tend to stay clear. The colored decorations of the fish serve another purpose as well: they let the lionfish blend in with the surrounding reef and not be noticed until it moves. This allows fish to swim close enough for the lionfish then to trap them with its large fins then gulp them down whole. God did an amazing work with the lionfish to make a beautiful creature that incorporates its beauty into its camouflage as well as its defense mechanism.

More fishy fun:
Wikipedia
Great Barrier Reef site
Some more info

Cutting A Rug

Some people enjoy gardening to produce some nice veggies. Often they will use compost or mulch to fertilize the soil for their plants. Leaf cutter ants do this very thing. The ants collect leaves and other foliage and bring them back to their underground nest. There, gardener ants grow a fungus on the leaves which the ants then use as food. The ants even have special bacteria on them that release chemicals to keep the fungus from becoming infected by mold. These ants are an awesome display of how God uses symbiotic relationships in nature and also how things in nature are way more complicated than I would ever be able to come up with.

Sweet additional stuff:
Wikipedia
Some cool pics
BBC and more BBC

Star light, Star bright...

Starfish are amazing, beautiful creatures. One of the most colorful and well-known marine creatures, starfish are amazingly designed. They are able to use their special feet to pull open the shells of clams and other shellfish and can put its stomach out of its body to better digest food. Instead of blood, starfish have seawater circulate inside them. One of the most impressive features of a starfish is that if it loses a foot, it is able to grow it back. I think this regeneration is an absolutely incredible display of God's foresight and design.

More info:
Wikipedia
National Geographic
More sciency stuff

Even Bigger Than Tom Hanks

What is the biggest living thing you can think of? Is it a blue whale? Or maybe a redwood tree? Actually the giant sequoia tree in California is the most massive living thing! Sequoias can grow to be about 270 feet high and 40 feet in diameter! This is crazy huge! (Look at the guy in the picture to the right!) Redwoods actually grow taller to about 300 feet but aren’t as thick. Another neat thing about sequoias is that forest fires actually help sequoias reproduce. The heat from the fire dries out the cones in the tree and lets them release lots of seeds. These seeds fall on the newly cleared soil free of plants that block sunlight because of the recent fire. I think God was amazing in His design of the sequoia to provide a mechanism that only releases seeds at the most optimal time for growth.

To learn more:
General Sherman tree
Lots of pictures