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Aces of the Air

Photo by Bruce Marlin
Female fly in the Diptera family Syrphidae, genus Helophilus (Greek for "sun lover")

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That flies are excellent flyers is no secret to anybody. Yet few of us would have known they are better than any bird, bat or bee. Houseflies are capable of making six turns a second, hovering, flying straight up, down, backward and even doing somersaults.1 Among them the hoverflies are the ultimate aces: they hover in one spot, dash in any direction and return to the very same mid-air spot! All these manoeuvres are performed with a brain smaller than a sesame seed! And this brain and the sensory system—two thirds of it—process visual information from their compound eyes which allows them to make 90-degree turns in front of an obstacle. This is also made possible by two equilibrium organs on their backs that act as gyroscopes, called halteres (see Why a fly can fly like a fly).

Evolutionists believe that flies have evolved for millions of years and therefore it is no miracle they can perform such incredible air stunts. Yet, consider the sum of all those minuscule marvels of technology (a true nanotechnology) that allow them to process huge amounts of data and translate them into aerobatics no human device can even come close to, by the use of only a dozen muscles!

No evolutionary scientist can even imagine mechanisms that could evolve such phenomenal devices and all of them at basically the same time. Any intermediate form that lacks any of these devices has very little chances of surviving and reproducing.

To be as successful as flies are, all the devices had to be present from the beginning. And they certainly were, since God the Creator invented and put them together.

Further reading:

Published: 14 July 2006

Reference

  1. Achenbach, J., Mighty Flighty, National Geographic, June 2006, p.30.