More Echolocation Convergence in Bats

#10 Mark Frank asked how a rodent acquired batwings instantly. Diversity in creatures is a fact. So there must be mechanisms. As a biblical creationist working from biblical boundaries and all evidence that is out there to note it follows creatures after the great flood had a innate ability to instantly adapt their bodies to fill empty niches of a post flood empty world. This happened with land mammals becoming water mammals and this happened with bats. There is no record of them below the k-p line(the flood line to this YEC) and they clearly are just rodents with wings. Very unlikely they were created by God or a after creation due to the fall. they look like flying rats indeed. So simply it follows, with as much evidence as anyone, that they instantly as creatures developed wings from some innate ability of their bodies now dormant. Not by selection.mutation. No intermediates played a role. Diversity in the natural world is not explained by mechanisms of evolution or simple minor drift from created kinds. creatures had abilities, like people with colour etc, to instantly react to niche need and a general plan of the creator to fill the earth. Robert Byers

A brief survey article in Science, Mobile Robots: Motor Challenges and Materials Solutions (2007). Sooner Emeritus

Flapping-wing aerial vehicles (ornithopters) were long ago abandoned because the control laws are hopelessly complicated and fault-intolerant.

See the subsection "Ornithopter Arrives" in this new BBC article on an artificial swallow butterfly. Note the importance of material in mimicry of the wings. Also note that there is no control system. The crucial factor in coordinated flight is the veins in the wings. When bodies and motor control evolve together, bodies are controllable. If you build a weak analog of a body from arbitrary materials, there is no reason to expect it to be controllable. Sooner Emeritus

That if a bat has less-than perfect “neural wiring” for echolocation, it will die at birth? No. It will die when it crashes into something. GilDodgen

The tremendous progress in robotics over the past 15 years is due largely to advances in materials, not control theory. This is a completely sub-idiotic assertion, unworthy of comment. I don't argue with sub-idiots who have yet to earn their advanced degrees in idiocy. I thought you had two or three years of OJT in simulating the trajectory of a powered parachute drop, with one or two weeks of coursework in use of a simulation package. Your facts are wrong at every turn. The parachutes are not powered. (What in the hell do you think a "powered parachute" is -- a parachute with a motor on it?) I did simulate the trajectory of the parachutes initially, but my software and the electromechanical systems have been repeatedly tested and validated at Yuma Proving Ground with actual drop tests. I spent four days in a course two years ago learning the rudiments of LS-DYNA finite element software, but this has nothing to do with the parachute systems. I've been using Dyna for the last two years simulating and empirically verifying the simulation results concerning tensile inflatable structures, which are now in widespread use in Afghanistan supporting our troops. GilDodgen

Here's a pretty cool video showing how a sperm whale uses echolocation to hunt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z2Lfxpi710 funny thing is that whales appear about the same time as bats in the fossil record (+50 mya) and neither whales, or bats. have changed to any significant degree since they first appeared, yet evolutionists want us to believe that whales transitioned completely from a furry land animal to a fully aquatic deep sea diver in 10 million years.??? Shoot it turns out evolutionists can't even account the fixation of a single beneficial mutation within 10 million years! Whale Evolution Vs. Population Genetics - Richard Sternberg PhD. in Evolutionary Biology - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4165203 bornagain77

#5 GilDodgen:

Add to this the fact that the echolocation- and visual-feedback systems of bats and birds must be seamlessly integrated through the central nervous system with the flight-control systems, with fraction-of-a-second precision – or the creature will die an instantaneous and ignominious death, leaving behind no progeny.

Oh, the drama. When I was very young, I had a classmate who was somewhat nearsighted. Of course, she shortly died an instantaneous and ignominious death. I mean, her optical/neural wiring fell a good bit short of perfect, obviously. Seriously, what could that "instantaneous" part possibly mean? That if a bat has less-than perfect "neural wiring" for echolocation, it will die at birth? That there can be no such thing as low-level echolocation; it's all or nothing? Lenoxus

Gil Dodgen,

As someone with a specialty in GN&C (guidance, navigation and control) software for UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) I can attest to the fact that this is an extraordinarily difficult and challenging engineering discipline. Flapping-wing aerial vehicles (ornithopters) were long ago abandoned because the control laws are hopelessly complicated and fault-intolerant.

I thought you had two or three years of OJT in simulating the trajectory of a powered parachute drop, with one or two weeks of coursework in use of a simulation package. People who know ANYTHING about robotics know that many intractable control problems vanished with a switch to biomimetic muscles and joints. The tremendous progress in robotics over the past 15 years is due largely to advances in materials, not control theory. I had not seen a report of a wing-flapping robotic bird, but knew that researchers had to be developing them, and just spent a minute locating this report from MIT. Sooner Emeritus

Above, anyone offended by that joke is beyond hope. Ilion

The following is a joke that is semi-relevant to the topic: Several years from now it was time for richard dawkins to leave this world. After he departed he ascended into the heavens (don’t ask me why it’s just how the joke goes :P) where he was met by St. Peter at the gates. “Hello richard”, said St. Peter. “Please do come in, we’ve been expecting you.” dawkins all excited and giddy walks through the gates into the heavenly garden and thanks St. Peter. “I can’t believe I’m here” he replies. St. Peter then gives the man a tour of the garden and then takes him to his assigned room. “Wow! Says richard, you’re going to give me my own room?” “Of course” says St. Peter. “It’s all yours”. “Why thank you very much” replies richard. “I appreciate it a great deal. Letting me in, despite of my behavior, giving me my own room here. What more could I ask for?” “Well” says St. Peter, “I also have a present for you.” “Oh my! A present too?” Replies richard. “Yes, it’s in the closet come see”. St. Peter then opens the closet and takes out a set of wings. “Goodness gracious” replies richard. “You are going to give me wings? You mean I’m going to be an angel?” To which St. Peter replies, “No, Richard. A rat with wings is not an angel… It’s a bat!” I hope this is not inappropriate or offensive to anyone. If so my apologies. above

"Thus Mr. H. G. Wells, in his wonderfully interesting and valuable "Outline of History," takes one unnaturally simplified case of the growing of fur, or the change of the color of fur. He then implies that all other cases of natural selection are of the same kind. But they are not of the same kind, but of an exceedingly different and even opposite kind. If fur protects from cold, the longer fur will be a protection in the stronger cold. But any fur will be a protection in any cold. Any fur will be better than no fur; any fur will serve some of the purposes of fur. But it is not certain that any horn is better than no horn; it is very far from certain that any hump is better than no hump. It is very far from obvious that the first rudimentary suggestion of a horn, the first faint thickening which might lead through countless generations to the growth of a horn, would be of any particular use as a horn. And we must suppose, on the Darwinian hypothesis, that the hornless animal reached his horn through unthinkable gradations of what were, for all practical purposes, hornless animal. Why should one rhinoceros be so benevolent a Futurist as to start an improvement that could only help some much later rhinoceros to survive? And why on earth should its mere foreshadowing help the earlier rhinoceros to survive? This thesis can only explain variations when they discreetly refrain from varying very much. To the real riddles that arrest the eye, it has no answer that can satisfy the intelligence. For any child or man with his eyes open, I imagine, there is no creature that really calls for an answer, like a living riddle, so clearly as the bat. But if you will call up the Darwinian vision, of thousands of intermediary creatures with webbed feet that are not yet wings, their survival will seem incredible. A mouse can run, and survive; and a flitter-mouse can fly, and survive. But a creature that cannot yet fly, and can no longer run, ought obviously to have perished, by the very Darwinian doctrine which has to assume that he survived. There are many other signs of this confession of failure, for which I have hardly left myself space. There is a chorus of Continental doubts; there is a multitude of destructive criticisms with which alone I could fill this article, even from my own very loose and general reading. But I will add a third reason of the same more general sort. The Darwinians have this mark of fighters for a lost cause, that they are perpetually appealing to sentiment and to authority. Put your bat or your rhinoceros simply and innocently as a child might put them, before the Darwinian, and he will answer by an appeal to authority. He will probably answer with the names of various German professors; he will not answer with any ordinary English words, explaining the point at issue. God condescended to argue with Job, but the last Darwinian will not condescend to argue with you. He will inform you of your ignorance; he will not enlighten your ignorance. And I will add this point of merely personal experience of humanity: when men have a real explanation they explain it, eagerly and copiously and in common speech, as Huxley freely gave it when he thought he had it. When they have no explanation to offer, they give short dignified replies, disdainful of the ignorance of the multitude." ~G. K. Chesterton, Doubts About Darwinism Clive Hayden

semi off topic hot off the press: Hammerhead Shark Study Shows Cascade of Evolution Affected Size, Head Shape - May 2010 Excerpt: The ancestor of all hammerhead sharks probably appeared abruptly in Earth's oceans about 20 million years ago and was as big as some contemporary hammerheads, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.,,,In the new study, scientists focused on the DNA of eight species of hammerhead sharks to build family "gene trees" going back thousands to millions of generations. In addition to showing that small hammerheads evolved from a large ancestor, the team showed that the "signature" cephalofoils of hammerheads underwent divergent evolution in different lineages over time, likely due to selective environmental pressures, said Martin. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100518113132.htm ,,,And I guess smaller dogs "evolved" from the wolves that abruptly appeared in the fossil record. ,,,and as I recall the main morphological difference of bacteria today and that of +500 million years ago, is that the ancient bacteria are slightly larger in size Can anyone say front-loaded Genetic Entropy,,, An interesting point in all this, if they were so inclined to do this test, would be that they would find that the "larger", more genetically diverse, hammerheads of today would have much more of a propensity to rapidly radiate (sub-speciate) than the smaller species, with the most drastically deviated hammerheads (smallest ones) having a drastically reduced ability to change at all. bornagain77

Aleta, at least he referenced one thing for the sudden appearance of bats before he went off on his tangent: Earliest known Australian Tertiary mammal fauna:- 1992 Excerpt: REMAINS of Early Eocene vertebrates from freshwater clays near Murgon, southeastern Queensland, represent Australia's oldest marsupials, bats, non-volant placentals, frogs, madtsoiid snakes, trionychid turtles1and birds. Radiometric dating of illites forming part of the matrix of the mammal-bearing zone has given a minimum age estimate of 54.6 plusminus 0.05 x 106 years, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v356/n6369/abs/356514a0.html further notes: First Eocene Bat From Australia Excerpt: Remains of a bat, Australonycteris clarkae, gen. et sp. nov., are reported from freshwater clays radiometrically dated to 54.6 million years old in southeastern Queensland, Australia. It is the oldest bat recorded for the southern hemisphere and one of the world's oldest. http://www.jstor.org/pss/4523576?cookieSet=1 Australonycteris clarkae Excerpt: Australonycteris clarkae, from the Eocene of Queensland, is the oldest bat from the Southern Hemisphere and one of the oldest in the world. It is similar to other archaic Eocene bats from the Northern Hemisphere, and could probably navigate using echolocation, like most bats do today. (of note: some "modern" bats do not use echolocation today): http://australianmuseum.net.au/Australonycteris-clarkae bornagain77

Thanks, ba - it's always good to check your sources. Aleta

Aleta thanks for alerting me to the pseudo-postulation that were deeper in the page I had cited. I will correct to deeper a reference. That tripe you pointed out is "almost" as bad as the unfounded conjecture that evolutionists continually spew forth. ,,, Well OK Aleta,,, it is "as bad" as what evolutionists spew forth. bornagain77

as to Nak bluffing that the genome is Junk it seems he missed this recent article: Nature Reports Discovery of “Second Genetic Code” But Misses Intelligent Design Implications - May 2010 Excerpt: Rebutting those who claim that much of our genome is useless, the article reports that "95% of the human genome is alternatively spliced, and that changes in this process accompany many diseases." ,,,, the complexity of this "splicing code" is mind-boggling:,,, A summary of this article also titled “Breaking the Second Genetic Code” in the print edition of Nature summarized this research thusly: “At face value, it all sounds simple: DNA makes RNA, which then makes protein. But the reality is much more complex.,,, So what we’re finding in biology are: # “beautiful” genetic codes that use a biochemical language; # Deeper layers of codes within codes showing an “expanding realm of complexity”; # Information processing systems that are far more complex than previously thought (and we already knew they were complex), including “the appearance of features deeper into introns than previously appreciated” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/05/nature_reports_discovery_of_se.html which fell on the heels of this article: The following paper from Nature readily admits that the Junk DNA paradigm is "exploded": Human Genome “Infinitely More Complex” Than Expected - April 2010 Excerpt: Hayden acknowledged that the “junk DNA” paradigm has been blown to smithereens. “Just one decade of post-genome biology has exploded that view,” she said, speaking of the gene regulation was a straightforward, linear process of gene coding for regulator protein that controls transcription. “Biology’s new glimpse at a universe of non-coding DNA – what used to be called ‘junk’ DNA – has been fascinating and befuddling.” If it’s junk, why would the human body decode 74% to 93& of it? The plethora of small RNAs produced by these non-coding regions, and how they interact with each other and with DNA, was completely unexpected when the project began.,,, In the heady post-genome years, systems biologists started a long list of projects built on this strategy, attempting to model pieces of biology such as the yeast cell, E. coli, the liver and even the ‘virtual human’. So far, all these attempts have run up against the same roadblock: there is no way to gather all the relevant data about each interaction included in the model.,,, The p53 network she spoke of is a good example of unexpected complexity. Discovered in 1979, the p53 protein was first thought to be a cancer promoter, then a cancer suppressor. “Few proteins have been studied more than p53,” she said. “...Yet the p53 story has turned out to be immensely more complex than it seemed at first.” She gave some details: "Researchers now know that p53 binds to thousands of sites in DNA, and some of these sites are thousands of base pairs away from any genes. It influences cell growth, death and structure and DNA repair. It also binds to numerous other proteins, which can modify its activity, and these protein–protein interactions can be tuned by the addition of chemical modifiers, such as phosphates and methyl groups. Through a process known as alternative splicing, p53 can take nine different forms, each of which has its own activities and chemical modifiers. Biologists are now realizing that p53 is also involved in processes beyond cancer, such as fertility and very early embryonic development. In fact, it seems willfully ignorant to try to understand p53 on its own. Instead, biologists have shifted to studying the p53 network, as depicted in cartoons containing boxes, circles and arrows meant to symbolize its maze of interactions. Network theory is now a new paradigm that has replaced the one-way linear diagram of gene to RNA to protein. That used to be called the “Central Dogma” of genetics. Now, everything is seen to be dynamic, with promoters and blockers and interactomes, feedback loops, feed-forward processes, and “bafflingly complex signal-transduction pathways.” http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201004.htm#20100405a bornagain77

From the last link from post 3 by bornagain:

Click here to find out more about sudden origins and rapid evolution in the fossil record. The creationist narrative in Genesis 1 is contradicted by many ancient Christian texts. Instead of an Almighty Creator God, ancient Christian texts espouse that the universe is born from blind arrogance and stupidity. The angels caused evolution to occur from species to species. There are many gods, (or aliens?), and the Christian God is just one among them. Satan the Devil writes scripture, and thus the Bible was polluted with Genesis 1. Archaeology and modern scholarship demonstrate that Genesis is indeed corrupted. Cavemen walk with Adam and Eve. Esoteric prophecies reveal the coming of Christ, and also reveal the dark forces that govern the cosmos. Such are the ancient Christian writings. Sciencevindicates the truth of these ideas. Evolution often happens too fast for Darwin’s theory. Gaps in the fossil record indicate that some kind of unnatural force acts together with natural selection. Astrobiology reveals that intelligent life probably evolved long before us. The fossil record reveals strange clues that aliens abducted species and transported them across oceans, and that DNA from diverse lineages was combined to spawn hybrid species. Evidently, aliens influence evolution, and they are the gods of the world’s religions. This is not fiction. All these facts are thoroughly documented in the links above.

When we teach the controversy, we'd better not forget to teach this theory. :-) Aleta

Mr Ilion, Thank you for answering in good humor. A more direct response is that, while we can see transitional forms occupying niches today in the ecologies of today, we don't have a fossil record of a transitional form. Bats appear in the fossil record with a whole suite of changes already in place, flight and echolocation, for example. A bat genome sequencing is underway, and when it is complete we should have some insight into these issues from an independent line of evidence. Nakashima

#8 This biblical creationist accepts as a very excellent option that bats are just land creatures who instantly developed for flight in a post flood world. I am intrigued as how this might work in detail. Did a rat or ssome other non-bat give birth to a bat or did the bat spontaneously appear? In either case how was the baby bat sustained/protected until it grew up? Presumably, whatever the mechanism, multiple bats were created simultaneously? If not, how did the first bat reproduce? Mark Frank

DaveM: “Plus, there are no transitional forms. ” Nakashima: “You don’t consider a flying squirrel a transitional form between rodent and bat?” I know! And those old cars with fins are transitional forms between obligate terrestrial automobiles and amphibious vehicles, leading eventually to fully-aquatic submarines. And those old cars with airfoils are transitional forms between obligate terrestrial automobiles and air-borne craft. There was even some interbreeding between the amphibious vehicles and the air-borne craft, such that some air-borne craft require stretches of water for their nesting sites (these species are confined mostly to Alaska and upper Canada). Ilion

This biblical creationist accepts as a very excellent option that bats are just land creatures who instantly developed for flight in a post flood world. So I accept there is some innate mechanism, at least back then, for some kind of rat to have, without intermediates, taken to air. I don't need to see it as a created creature by God. in fact it seems very unlikely that such a rodent like creature was not first a flightless land creature. Whats the point to create it.?! Mechanisms for biology are not from selection on mutation but they are there. Robert Byers

Yo, BA^77! Do you remember this discussion from mid-March? Mr BA^77, Nak, as Dr. Sternberg asked Falk; Pick a number any number. 42 is obviously the correct number! But seriously, I’d rather wait for the expermentalists to tell me the number. I’ll stick with 42% if you want me to, I don’t share Dr von Sternberg’s conviction that ALUs etc are functional, unless “causes cancer” is a function. Well, it looks like Sal Cordova was right. Deep sequencing (Solexa/Illumina technology) has played an important role in helping us understand the human genome. Junk DNA really is junk. Nakashima

Mr Davem, Plus, there are no transitional forms. You don't consider a flying squirrel a transitional form between rodent and bat? Nakashima

As someone with a specialty in GN&C (guidance, navigation and control) software for UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) I can attest to the fact that this is an extraordinarily difficult and challenging engineering discipline. Flapping-wing aerial vehicles (ornithopters) were long ago abandoned because the control laws are hopelessly complicated and fault-intolerant. Add to this the fact that the echolocation- and visual-feedback systems of bats and birds must be seamlessly integrated through the central nervous system with the flight-control systems, with fraction-of-a-second precision – or the creature will die an instantaneous and ignominious death, leaving behind no progeny. Arguing with Darwinists about the plausibility of random errors filtered by natural selection producing such technology and precise engineering is like trying to discuss reality with a psychotic mental patient standing on a street corner talking to himself. GilDodgen

Off Topic free e-book: New Book, Signature of Controversy, Responds to Steve Meyer's Critics http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/05/signature_of_controversy_respo.html While Parts I and II deal with Signature’s more serious critics, or anyway those with reputations for seriousness, Part III concentrates on the crowd of pygmies who populate the furious, often obscene Darwinist blogs. download book here: http://www.discoveryinstitutepress.com/signature-of-controversy/ bornagain77

BATMAN ORIGINAL 60's TV THEME SONG http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3eCRovzbfw Bats popped out of the supposed evolutionary wonderland about 55 million years ago. They first appear as a radically new yet fully developed form, which was not in any way significantly different from modern bats. Their debut in the fossil record is sudden, complete, and lacks intermediaries. Australonycteris clarkae is the oldest bat ever found in the fossil record at 54.6 million years old. The ear bones of Australonycteris show that it could navigate using echolocation just like modern bats. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/biology/the-bionic-antinomy-of-darwinism/#comment-340412 Of note; The bat’s echometer has more accuracy, more efficiency, less power consumption and less size than any artificial sonar constructed by engineers. The echometer cannot be installed into the bat in the afterward as a simple plug-in, rather echometer and brain had to be designed as a whole system from the beginning. http://focus.ti.com/docs/solution/folders/print/119.html Bats - An Example of Sudden Origins in the Fossil Record Excerpt: Bats popped out of the evolutionary woodwork about 55 million years ago. They first appear as a radically new yet fully developed form, which was not in any way significantly different from modern bats. Their debut in the fossil record is sudden, complete, and lacks intermediaries. In 55 million years, they have changed little. http://www.jesusbelievesinevolution.com/bat_fossils.htm bornagain77

Davem, that's an interesting point. Darwinists quibble that cars can't be analogous to life because life self-replicates. But cars do self-replicate in a way. Their designs self-replicate with modification. Good designs survive selection pressures while bad ones do not. But an airplane design does not come from random mistakes in a car blueprint. Collin

Bats supposedly evolved from something like a rodent. Yet I see no evolutionary advantage to longer digits with webs between them on the forelimbs. A crude analogy would be to say that copying errors in the blueprints for an automobile resulted in so many improvements that were retained that they eventually had an airplane. Plus, there are no transitional forms. Davem