Air-Cooled Elephants

Genesis 2:1-2
“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which He had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.”

Every engineer will agree that if an intelligent design does a good job, then use that design again. There is no need to re-invent the wheel.

All warm-blooded animals generate heat as they digest their food. Large animals generate a lot of heat and, like a car engine, there has to be a cooling device. Otherwise, the heat would kill the animal, especially in a hot climate.

The elephant is a perfect example. It is large and lives in a hot climate. If you were the engineer-designer, how would you overcome the heat problem? You could provide the elephant with a lower metabolic rate so that less heat is produced in the first place. But here there is a limit. No, the solution was to equip the elephant with huge ears weighing about 100 pounds each and filled with small blood vessels. By changing how close its ears are held to its body, or flapped, the elephant can control how much the blood in its ears is cooled before it is returned to the rest of its body.

By the time the Lord finished the work of creation, He had solved millions of engineering problems just like this one. And these are often the same problems that today’s engineers must solve. Is it any wonder, then, that many engineers are also creationists!

Prayer:
Dear Father in heaven, help me to have joy in my work, as You felt joy in Your work of creation. Take all that I do, whatever it is, as part of my offering for You. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Notes:
“How Fluids Lift Weights.” Science Digest, May 1983, p. 92. Photo: Courtesy of Mister-E. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.