Ligers and wholphins? What next?
Crazy mixed-up animals … what do they tell us? They seem to defy man-made
classification systems—but what about the created ‘kinds’ in Genesis?
by Don Batten
If we can cross-breed a zebra and a horse (to produce a ‘zorse’), a
lion and a tiger (a liger or tigon), or a false killer whale and a dolphin (a
wholphin), what does this tell us about the original kinds of animals that God created?
The Bible tells us in
Genesis chapter 1 that God created plants to produce seed ‘after
their kind’ (vv.
11, 12). God also created the animals to reproduce ‘after
their kind’ (vv.
20, 24, 25). ‘After their/its kind’
is repeated ten times in
Genesis 1, giving emphasis to the principle. And we take it for granted.
When we plant a tomato seed, we don’t expect to see a geranium pop up out
of the ground. Nor do we expect that our dog will give birth to kittens or that
Aunt Betty, who is expecting, will bring home a chimpanzee baby from the hospital! Our
everyday experience confirms the truth of the Bible that things produce offspring
true to their kind.
But what is a created ‘kind’?
And what organisms today represent the kinds God created in the beginning? The creationist
scientist, Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778), the founder of the science of taxonomy,1 tried to determine the created kinds. He defined
a ‘species’ as a group of organisms that could interbreed among themselves,
but not with another group, akin to the Genesis concept. (See
aside below.)
Finding the created kinds
From
Genesis 1, the ability to produce offspring, i.e. to breed with one another,
defines the original created kinds. Linnaeus recognised this, but named many species2 without any breeding experiments, on the basis of
such things as flower characteristics. In his mature years he did extensive hybridization
(cross-breeding) experiments and realised that his ‘species’ concept
was too narrow for the species to be considered as created kinds; he thought that
the genus perhaps corresponded better with the created kind.3,4
Even today, creationists are often misrepresented as believing that God created
all the species we have today, just like they are today, in the beginning. This
is called ‘fixity of species’. The Bible does not teach this. Nevertheless,
university professors often show students that a new ‘species’ has arisen
in ferment flies, for example, and then claim that this disproves the Genesis account
of creation. Darwin made this very mistake when he studied the finches and tortoises
on the Galapagos islands. (He also erred in assuming that creation implied that
each organism was made where it is now found; but from the Bible it is clear that
today’s land-dwelling vertebrates migrated to their present locations after
the Flood.)
If two animals or two plants can hybridize (at least enough to produce a truly fertilized
egg), then they must belong to (i.e. have descended from) the same original created
kind. If the hybridizing species are from different genera in a family, it suggests
that the whole family might have come from the one created kind. If the genera are
in different families within an order, it suggests that maybe the whole order may
have derived from the original created kind.
On the other hand, if two species will not hybridize, it does not necessarily prove
that they are not originally from the same kind. We all know of couples who cannot
have children, but this does not mean they are separate species!
In the case of three species, A, B and C, if A and B can each hybridize
with C, then it suggests that all three are of the same created kind—whether
or not A and B can hybridize with each other. Breeding barriers can arise through
such things as mutations. For example, two forms of ferment flies (Drosophila) produced
offspring that could not breed with the parent species.5
That is, they were a new biological ‘species’. This was due to a slight
chromosomal rearrangement, not any new genetic information. The new ‘species’
was indistinguishable from the parents and obviously the same kind as the parents,
since it came from them.
Following are some examples of hybrids that show that the created kind is often
at a higher level than the species, or even the genus, named by taxonomists.
Mules, zeedonks and zorses
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Zonkeys result from a cross between a zebra and a donkey (left). ‘Tigger’
(above ), belongs to Camilla Maluotoga, from New Mexico in the USA, and is the name
she gave to this cross between a horse and a zebra, known as a zorse.
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Crossing a male ass (donkey—Equus asinus) and a horse (Equus caballus)
produces a mule (the reverse is called a hinny). Hybrids between zebras and horses
(zorse) and zebras and donkeys (zedonk, zonkey, zebrass) also readily occur.
Some creationists have reasoned that because these hybrids are sterile, the horse,
ass and zebra must be separate created kinds. However, not only does this go beyond
the biblical text, it is overwhelmingly likely that horses, asses and zebras (six
species of Equus) are the descendants of the one created kind which left the Ark.
Hybridization itself suggests this, not whether the offspring are fertile or not.
Infertility in offspring can be due to rearrangements of chromosomes in the different
species—changes such that the various species have the same DNA information
but the chromosomes of the different species no longer match up properly to allow
the offspring to be fertile. Such (non-evolutionary) changes within a kind can cause
sterility in hybrids.
Ligers
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The Created Cat Kind |
Possible history of cats since Creation. Speciation (based on pre-existing created
genetic information) probably occurred faster after the Flood due to greater environmental
pressures, isolation due to migration of small populations, and many unoccupied
ecological niches.
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A male African lion (Panthera leo) and a female tiger (Panthera tigris)
can mate to produce a liger. The reverse cross produces a tigon. Such crossing does
not normally happen in the wild because most lions live in Africa and most tigers
live in Asia. Also, lions and tigers just don’t mix; they are enemies in the
wild. However, the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina (USA), raised a lion and a tigress together. Arthur, the lion, and
Ayla, the tigress, became good friends and bred to produce Samson and Sudan, two
huge male ligers. Samson stands 3.7 m (12 feet) tall on his hind legs, weighs 500
kg (1,100 lbs) and can run at 80 km/hr (50 mph).
Lions and tigers belong to the same genus, Panthera, along
with the jaguar, leopard and snow leopard, in the subfamily Felinae. This subfamily
also contains the genus Felis, which includes the mountain lion and numerous species
of smaller cats, including the domestic cat. The cheetah, genus Acinonyx,
belongs to a different subfamily.6 Thus the genera
Panthera, Felis and Acinonyx may represent descendants
of three original created cat kinds, or maybe two: Panthera-Felis and Acinonyx,
or even one cat kind. The extinct sabre-tooth tiger may have been a different created
kind (see diagram above).
The Panthera cats lack a hyoid bone at the back of the tongue, compared
to Felis. Acinonyx has the hyoid, but lacks the ability to retract its
claws. So the differences between the cats could have arisen through loss of genetic
information due to mutations (loss of the bone; loss of claw retraction). Note that
this has nothing to do with molecules-to-man evolution, which requires the addition
of new information, not loss of information (which is to be expected in a fallen
world as things tend to ‘fall apart’).
Kekaimalu the wholphin
In 1985, Hawaii’s Sea Life Park reported
the birth of a baby from the mating of a male false killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens)
and a female bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)
.7 The birth surprised the park staff, as the parents
are rather different in appearance. Here we have a hybrid between different genera
in the same family, Delphinidae (dolphins and killer whales).8
Since the offspring in this case are fertile (Kekaimalu has since given birth to
a baby wholphin), these two genera are really, by definition, a single polytypic
biological species.2 Other genera in the group are
much more alike than the two that produced the offspring in Hawaii, which suggests
that the 12 living genera might have all descended from the original created kind.
Rama the cama
Veterinarians in the United Arab Emirates successfully cross-bred a camel and a
llama. The ‘cama’, named ‘Rama’, has the cloven hooves of
a llama and the short ears and tail of a camel. The scientists hope to combine the
best qualities of both into the one animal—the superior fleece and calmer
temperament of the llama with the larger size of the camel.
‘Genae’ the snake—the live, healthy offspring of snakes from two different genera (see main text).
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Genae the hybrid snake
‘Genae’ (pictured right) resulted from a cross between an albino corn
snake (Elaphe guttata) and an albino king snake (Lampropeltis triangulum)
in a reptile park in California.9 Apparently, this
particular intergeneric hybrid is fertile. Genae is almost four years old and already
1.4 m (4½ ft) long. The parent snakes belong to the same snake family, Colubridae;
the success of this hybrid suggests that the many species and genera of snakes in
this family today could have all originally come from the same created kind.
Other hybrids
With the cattle kind, seven species of the genus Bos
hybridize, but so also does the North American buffalo, Bison bison, with
Bos, to produce a ‘cattalo’. Here the whole family of cattle-type
creatures, Bovidae, probably came from an original created cattle kind which was
on the Ark.10
Plant breeders have bred some agriculturally important plants by hybridizing different
species and even genera. For example, triticale, a grain crop, came from a cross
of wheat (Triticum) and rye (Secale), another fertile hybrid between
genera.
During my years as a research scientist for the government in
Australia, I helped create a hybrid of the delicious fruit species lychee (Litchi
chinensis) and longan (Dimocarpus longana), which both belong
to the same family.11 I also studied the hybrids of
six species of the custard apple family, Annonaceae. Each of these two family groupings,
recognised by botanists today, probably represents the original created kinds.
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The delicious fruit species, lychee (left) and longan (right) hybridize, despite
being different genera. |
God created all kinds, or basic types, of creatures and plants with the ability
to produce variety in their offspring. These varieties come from recombinations
of the existing genetic information created in the beginning, through the marvellous
reproductive method created by God. Since the Fall (Genesis
3), some variations also occurred through degenerative changes caused by
mutations (e.g. loss of wing size in the cormorants of the Galápagos Islands).
The variations allow for the descendants of the created kinds to adapt to different
environments and ‘fill the earth’, as
God commanded. If genera represent the created kinds, then Noah took less than 20,000
land animals on the Ark; far fewer if kinds occasionally gave rise to families.
From these kinds came many ‘daughter species’, which generally each
have less information (and are thus more specialized) than the parent population
on the Ark. Properly understood, adaptation by natural selection (which gets rid
of information) does not involve the addition of new complex DNA information. Thus,
students should not be taught that it demonstrates ‘evolution happening’,
as if it showed the process by which fish could eventually turn into people.
Understanding what God has told us in Genesis provides a sound foundation for thinking
about the classification of living things, as Linnaeus found, and how the great
diversity we see today has come about.
Linnaeus and the classification system
Linnaeus established the two-part naming system of genus and species. For
example, he called wheat Triticum aestivum, which means in Latin, ‘summer
wheat’. Such ‘scientific’ names are normally italicised, with
the genus beginning with a capital. When used in scientific works, the names are
followed by the abbreviated name of the scientist responsible for the name. When
‘L.’ follows a name, this shows that Linnaeus first applied the name.
For example, the name for maize or ‘corn’ is Zea mays L. Linnaeus
named many plants and animals.
There can be one or many species in a genus, so genus is a higher level of classification.
Linnaeus also developed the idea of grouping genera (plural of genus) within higher
groupings he called orders, and the orders within classes. Linnaeus opposed the
pre-Darwin evolutionary ideas of his day, pointing out that life was not a continuum,
or a ‘great chain of being’, an ancient pagan Greek idea. He could classify
things, usually into neat groups, because of the lack of transitional forms.
Later, other levels of classification were added so that today we have species,
genus, family, order, class, phylum and kingdom. Sometimes other levels are added,
such as subfamily and subphylum.
The world’s only Wholphin … false killer whale/dolphin
cross
False killer whales (pseudorcas) and bottlenose dolphins are each from a different
genus. Man-made classification systems were thrown into confusion when these two
creatures mated and produced a live offspring (see main text).
This suggests that all killer whales and dolphins, which are all in the same family,
are the one created kind.
This wholphin’s size, shape and colour are right in between those of her parents.
She has 66 teeth—an ‘average’ between pseudorcas (44 teeth)
and bottlenose dolphins (88).
Kekaimalu has since mated with a dolphin to produce a live baby.
References and notes
- The study of the naming and classification of organisms. Return to text.
- ‘Biological species’ is often used today to refer to
a group of organisms that can interbreed to produce fertile offspring. It does not
always correlate with the taxonomic ‘species’. Note that the kinds would
originally have met the criterion for each being a separate biological species,
since they did not interbreed with any other kind. Return to text.
- In Latin, ‘genus’ conveys the meaning of origin, or
‘kind’, whereas ‘species’ means outward appearance (The
Oxford Latin Minidictionary, 1995). Return to text.
- Creationist biologists today often combine the Hebrew words
bara (create) and min (kind) to call the created kind a baramin.
Return to text.
- Marsh, Frank L., Variation and Fixity in Nature, Pacific
Press, CA, USA, p. 75, 1976. Return to text.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica 98 CD. Other authorities call
the Panthera genus Leo, so that the lion is then Leo leo.
Return to text.
- Keene Rees, Waimanalo Hapa Girl Makes 10! Waimanalo News,
May 1995, <http://www.hotspots.hawaii.com/Wolphin.html>, March 1, 2000. Return to text.
- The New Encyclopaedia Britannica 23:434,
1992. Return to text.
- Genae belongs to David Jolly, M.S. (USA). Genae was bred at a reptile
park at Bakersfield. Corn snakes are one of the most popular pet snakes in North
America, and snake fanciers have bred all sorts of colour variations, which are
catalogued at <http://members.aol.com/guttata319/Hawkherp/morfs.html>, March
22, 2000. Return to text.
- See Wieland, C., Recreating the extinct Aurochs? Creation
14(2):25–28, 1992. Return to text.
- McConchie, C.A., Batten, D.J. and Vithanage, V., Intergeneric
hybridization between litchi (Litchi chinensis Sonn.) and longan (Dimocarpus
longan Lour.), Annals of Botany 74:111–118,
1994. Return to text.
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