- Series:Animals, Creation, God’s Design, Transcript English
Genesis 1:21a
“And God created great whales…”
We have discussed the amazing narwhal before in a previous Creation Moment. So I was intrigued to see a new article about the narwhal on the Science Daily website. The article actually concerned an unusual whale skull which has been in Denmark’s Natural History Museum for 30 years. A Greenlandic hunter shot the whale in the 1980s. At the time, it was not possible to confirm what the strange skull was. But recent DNA analysis has proved what some scientists had already suspected. This was the skull of a hybrid whale, whose mother was a narwhal and whose father was a beluga.
The skull, which is larger than the skulls of either parent whale, contained a number of long, spiraling teeth, somewhat similar to the narwhal’s single tusk. The existence of these unusual teeth seems to have prevented the hybrid from feeding in the same way as its parents. While both narwhals and belugas feed in the water column, the hybrid had to forage on the ocean floor.
As creationists, we have no problem understanding why such a hybrid is possible. Both parent whales are members of the same family of whales – the Monodontidae. As we have discussed before, the biblical created kind, or baramin, is normally identified with the family level in an evolutionary-type taxonomy. It is also not a surprise to us that the mutation caused by this hybridization is unfavorable to the creature, and the new trait is likely to disappear again.
Prayer: We marvel at the way You have created all these creatures, Lord, and given them the information within, with which to respond, grow and adapt. Amen.
Author: Paul F. Taylor
Ref: University of Copenhagen. “Narwhals and belugas can interbreed.” ScienceDaily, 20 June 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190620100011.htm>. Image: A beluga and a narwhal, Public Domain image.
© 2020 Creation Moments. All rights reserved.
