- Series:Animals, Creation, God’s Design, Transcript English
Genesis 1:24
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”
Comedian Jerry Lewis advised us to “Never Smile at a Crocodile”, but is it okay to grin at an alligator? How closely related are these two types of animals, if at all? Creation biologists have done a good deal of study on the animals to find out which ones would have been on the Ark.
Evolutionists define an order, called crocodilia, which contains three families: alligators, crocodiles, and a third family, called gharials. Creationists group animals according to their baramins or “created kinds”. A baramin is normally considered to be approximately equivalent to an evolutionary family, but there are exceptions where a baramin is equated to the order or the subfamily level. It is possible that all crocodilia – crocodiles, alligator, and gharials – are part of the same baramin, in which case Noah needed just one pair. However, one of the indications that animals are in the same baramin is that they can hybridize. Hybridization does occur between species within each of the three families. For example, the largest crocodile in captivity is called Yai and is a cross between an estuarine and Siamese crocodile. But no hybridization has been observed between species from the different families. So creation biologists assume that each of the three crocodilia families is a separate baramin.
All this is to show that there is much research for creation scientists to do, but none of this research undermines the scriptural truth that God made these animals according to their kinds, just as He said.
Prayer: Lord God, we acknowledge the truthfulness of Your word as well as the challenge of finding out more about Your world by research. Thank You, Lord. Amen.
Author: Paul F. Taylor
Ref: Answers Research Journal 7 (2014):1–10. < www.answersingenesis.org/arj/v7/ark-turtle-crocodile-kinds.pdf >. Image: Crocodile by Leigh Bedford CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic.
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