From ScienceDaily:
It’s already known that some species of moth have evolved a range of defensive mechanisms to evade insectivorous bats’ highly-tuned echolocation (biosonar) detection skills. The discovery of a wingbeat-powered sound producing structure in the wings of a deaf moth is completely new.
Many larger species of moth use ears tuned to detect the echolocation calls of bats to provide an early warning of approaching bats allowing them to perform evasive manoeuvres. While others, such as some silk moths, have hindwing tails that produce salient echoes which act as false targets to bats — like the towed decoys fighter planes use against radar guided missiles.
The team of researchers from Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences and the Natural History Museum, London, were studying a group of smaller British moths known as the small ermine moths (Yponomeuta species), and discovered that despite their lack of hearing they were making continual clicking sounds whenever they fly. Unlike other species of moths, that produce sound in response to detecting an approaching bat, small ermine moths have evolved to produce continual warning sounds.
The sounds these moths produce are very similar to sounds produced by larger moths, such as the tiger moths, which warn bats of the moth’s distastefulness or toxicity (known as acoustic aposematism). At night an unpalatable moth cannot provide a bat with a conspicuous warning colour, so instead it warns its predator acoustically. The team suggest that small ermine moths are acoustically mimicking unpalatable, sound producing moths, to warn bats of their own distastefulness. …
“The fact that sound production in these moths has remained undiscovered for so long reminds us of how little we know of the complex acoustic world of bats and moths.” Paper. (open access) – Liam J. O’Reilly, David J. L. Agassiz, Thomas R. Neil, Marc W. Holderied. Deaf moths employ acoustic Müllerian mimicry against bats using wingbeat-powered tymbals. Scientific Reports, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-37812-z More.
It’s true. We know little.
Just how the moth developed such a defense is unclear. It doesn’t know about the world of sound and can’t be striving for anything one way or the other. A vast cascade of lucky accidents?
See also: Newly identified gecko is the latest in eerily accurate camouflage
Moths use acoustic camouflage to evade bats
Researchers: Poison Frog Warning Colors Also Act As Camouflage
Insects Used Camouflage 100 Million Years Ago
and
Is this the first recorded instance of smell camouflage?
Why would knowing about the world of sound matter with respect to evolving a defence mechanism?
as to:
Hmm, accidentally evolving sophisticated sound production for defense without prior knowledge of the properties of sound does not plausible in the least. As Newton stated, “Did blind chance know that there was light, and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures, after the most curious manner, to make use of it? These, and suchlike considerations, always have, and ever will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a Being who made all things, and has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared.”
Of note:
BA77
Evolution does not involve prior knowledge. You are being anthropocentric.
“Evolution does not involve prior knowledge.”
Nor does it involve any substantiating evidence of its grandiose claims. Just unfettered imagination from Darwinists that what greatly surpasses man in engineering prowess can be had by pure accident.
Brother Brian:
That is your unsupportable claim, anyway.
ET
No, that is inherent in the theory.
Brother Brian- Evolution by means of intelligent design is still evolution. There isn’t any theory of unguided evolution.
ET
And some people believe in Bigfoot and that the earth is round. 🙂
“And some people believe in Bigfoot and that the earth is round.”
And some people believe in Darwinian evolution.
Brother Brian:
No, some people accept that bigfoot exists and that the earth is round. There is more evidence for the existence of bigfoot than there is for unguided evolution’s ability to produce anything beyond what it has to be given to start with.
BA77
And some people believe that a man was born to a virgin, turned water to wine, cured people with leprosy and was raised from the dead. I guess the world is full of gullible people.
Brother Brian, unlike your gullible belief in the evidence free ‘just-so’ story telling of Darwinian evolution, where blind chance magically can bring that which is dead to life, and can magically bring that which is unconscious to consciousness, and which magically can, by far, out engineer and program our best engineers and programmers,
Brother Brian, unlike your gullible belief in the evidence free ‘just-so’ story telling of Darwinian evolution, Christianity has a rich apologetic history of robustly defending the primary claim of Christianity.
Namely, defending the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. As a British agnostic once said “let’s not discuss the other miracles; let’s discuss the resurrection. Because if the resurrection is true, then the other miracles are easily explained; and if the resurrection is not true, the other miracles do not matter.”
And in that regards, two of my favorite apologetic approaches are the minimal facts approach and undesigned coincidences approach,
The minimal facts approach uses the facts that leading bible scholar skeptics agree are true so as to prove the resurrection
The undesigned coincidences approach uses ‘undesigned’ biblical coincidences’ to establish the undeniable authenticity of the Biblical narrative, and to thus establish the reliability and authenticity of Jesus life and resurrection.
And let’s not forget the unrefuted Shroud of Turin
The repeated ‘voluntary forgetfulness’ of established facts and the repeated ‘distortion of scientific evidence’ by leading critics of the authenticity of the Shroud are gone over in the following paper
As well, seeing is believing
As well, by allowing agent causality back into the picture of modern physics, as quantum physics itself now demands, and as the Christian founders of modern physics originally envisioned, (Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, and Max Planck, to name a few), then a very credible empirically backed reconciliation, (via the Shroud of Turin), between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, i.e. the ‘Theory of Everything’, readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
Verse:
Of supplement note, In what I consider to be a shining example of poetic justice, in their claim that God does not really exist as a real person but is merely an illusion, the Atheist himself also ends up claiming that he himself does not really exist as a real person but that he is merely a neuronal illusion. Here are a few references that drive this point home,,,
Although the Darwinist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science, (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that Darwinists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to:
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Brother Brian:
Yes, and “some people” actually witnessed “water” turned “to wine,” and actually saw a leper cured, and actually were there when this Son of Man was crucified only to then find the Tomb empty and to eat a meal with this same Man.
Now, has anyone actually “seen” Darwinian evolution at work: that is, the gradual development of a higher taxa? Which, then, is more believeable?