Seals Show Super-Human Recognition Skills

Evolutionary scientists are often hard-pressed to explain human or even superhuman-like intelligence in animals. For example, let’s say that you last saw your child when she was four months old. It is now four years later. Are you certain you could pick out your child in a room full of a hundred four-year-old little girls?

A researcher with the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. studied the northern fur seal’s amazing ability to recognize family members. Nursing mothers are the only mothers among mammals that leave their nursing pups for as long as two weeks. They return after they have fed, having no problem finding their own young among the crowded colony. When the young reach the age of four months, they begin their migration south for the winter. The next spring, the young seals migrate back to their place of birth and easily recognize their mothers.

After recording the voices of more than two dozen seals, the researcher wanted to prove that recognition was taking place through the sound of an individual seal’s voice. Seals who heard the playback of their mother’s or child’s voice paid attention to the speakers, while others did not. After a year of not hearing a mother’s or child’s voice, each seal still paid attention to the recording of its mother or child. Even after four years, mother and child recognized each other’s voices.

Such memory and intelligence can only have intelligence as its source. That source is a loving Creator Who knows us even after our parents are gone.

John 10:3b-5
“He calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.”

Prayer:
Thank You, Father, for loving to hear my voice in prayer. Amen.

Notes:
Science News, 7/29/00, p. 69, “Mom, is that you? Seals show family recall.” Photo: Northern male fur seal and females. (Pixabay.com)