Marvellous moth motif
by Emil Silvestru
Photo by Carlo Delli
One of the most stunning of the wonders in the insect world is on the Emperor Speckled
Moth (Gynanisa maja) from southern Africa, a member of the silkmoth group.
To scare predators away, its wings display this strikingly accurate rendition of
a mammal’s face—even the sparkle in the pupils!
Many other day-flying silk moths have eye spots decorating their wings, but only
the Emperor Speckled Moth has such an elaborate design.
Photo by Carlo Delli
Secular scientists do not even try to explain the details of how such a masterful
living painting could have occurred, but they believe it happened somehow through
natural processes—genetic accidents performed repeated ‘experiments’
(‘tinkering’1) with the wing decoration, subsequently validated or invalidated by natural selection.
(Those patterns that more closely resembled a mammal predator would be more likely
to frighten off marauding birds, thus increasing the moth’s chance of survival.)
Natural selection is a fact, but to produce such a coherent picture via random changes
would have required an incredibly long time—far longer than even evolutionists
are willing to accept. And random changes are the only way for natural processes
to ‘create’ such a pattern; the moth cannot control the delicate and
enormously complicated molecular reactions that produce the wing patterns, nor does
it know what a mammal’s face looks like anyway. Its composite eyes are designed
to focus on nearby objects, and to detect motion—distant objects would appear
blurry.
The Emperor Speckled Moth is living evidence of God’s wonderful design
The Emperor Speckled Moth is living evidence of God’s wonderful design and
cries out in loud, clear living colour: ‘CREATION’.
References
- National Geographic 210(5):110–135,
November 2006. Return to text.
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