The Giraffe of the Forest

Genesis 1:25
“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”

The okapi is a fascinating animal. It is much shorter than a giraffe, being five feet tall, compared with 18 feet for the giraffe. It is placed by zoologists in the family Giraffidae as the only other extant genus, along with the giraffe. Evolutionists believe that giraffes and okapis have a common ancestor. Creationists consider that, in most cases, the evolutionary family is pretty much equivalent to the created kind, or baramin. So creationists also group giraffes and okapis within the same baramin. Different species are usually identified as being in the same baramin by their ability to hybridize. However, a search of the literature does not reveal any hybridization data. We assume they are in the same baramin by cognitum – i.e., they share so many of the same features by human cognitive senses.

Both animals have the same shaped head. Their teeth are very similar, having the same number and properties. They have the same unusual almost black tongues with which they remove leaves from trees to consume them. But the necks of the okapis are not long. Yet, they stretch their necks in order to reach leaves as high as possible, but only reaching lower branches. One could challenge evolutionists on why okapis did not also evolve longer necks for the same reason as the giraffes did, as they would have increased their food sources. The existence of the okapi is a considerable difficulty for evolutionists to explain.

Prayer: Thank You, Lord, that all things were made by You, through You, and for You. Amen.

 Author: Paul F. Taylor

Ref: Encyclopaedia Britannica, < https://www.britannica.com/animal/okapi >, accessed 9/28/2019. Image: Daniel Jolivet, CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic.

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