The Wombat’s Backward Pouch

Australia has many animals that are not found anywhere else in the world today. One of the most unique is the wombat, which looks like a small bear with brown fur. The wombat is a burrowing animal.

Like many of Australia’s animals, the wombat is a marsupial, having a pouch in which its prematurely born young complete their development. The pouches owned by most marsupials are open at the top toward the mother’s head. This works fine for the kangaroo and other marsupials – no one ever saw a kangaroo standing on its head.

But the wombat is a burrowing animal. If its pouch opened toward the mother’s head, it would very quickly fill with dirt, which wouldn’t do the young wombat inside the pouch any good. So, unlike most marsupials, the wombat’s pouch opens toward the animal’s hind legs – it points backward!

The marsupial’s pouch is a wondrous enough invention all by itself. But this pouch is a clear case of a specialized intelligent design for a unique situation. If the wombat’s backward pouch had been produced by mutations, how would baby wombats have gotten by during the millions of years of trial and error needed to redesign the pouch? It’s easy to see the wombat’s backward pouch as a humorous hint from the Creator that human theories simply cannot replace the account of creation that He has revealed to us in the Bible!

Ephesians 2:10
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Prayer: Lord, I thank You that You have so carefully planned every detail of the creation for the benefit of every creature. When things don’t seem to be going well in my life, comfort me with the fact that You are still in charge and that You care about the details of my life, too. Amen.

REF.:Major, Trevor. 1989. The backward wombat. Reasoning from Revelation, August. p. 3. Photo: A Youngster Looks out of it´s mother´s pouch_TimSagorski_CC BY SA 4.0jpg