EVOLUTION COULD NOT DO THIS

The U.S. military wishes it had a cheaper stealth bomber (presently the most expensive plane in the world). But the tiger moth has a radar jamming device which switches on as soon as a bat heads toward his way—keeping the bat from locating him! The Department of Defense needs to ask the little fellow how he does it. The tiger moth never paid a dollar for his equipment. It was given to him.

The ichneumon wasp (Thalessa) looks so delicate that the slightest wind ought to blow it over. Yet it lands on a hard tree trunk, and begins thumping with something that looks as delicate and frail as the leg of a daddy longlegs. But that antennae, thinner than a human hair, happens to be a high-power extension drill.

The drill is about 4½ inches [11.43 cm] long, so long and so thin and delicate that it curves up and down as the small insect thumps on the hardwood with it. After thumping for a time, the tiny creature somehow knows it has found the right place to start work. Drilling begins. This little wasp uses that delicate feeler to cut its way down through several inches of solid, hard oak wood! This is totally unexplainable. Scientists have tried to solve the puzzle, but without success.

The second miracle is what the wasp is drilling for: the larvae of a special beetle. How can it possibly know where to start its drill, so as to go straight down (it always drills straight down)—and reach the beetle larva? Scientists cannot figure this out either. Somehow the initial thumping told the tiny insect that a grub was several inches down, and that it was the kind of larva it was looking for. The ichneumon wasp lays its eggs on just one larva, that of the Tremex. When those eggs hatch, they will have food to grow on. Then, before they grow too large, tiny ichneumon wasps come out through that original hole. When they grow up, without any instruction from their parents, they know exactly what to do. They start thumping.

Birds fill different "niches" in the scheme of things. Creepers feed on the bark, going up. Nuthatches feed on the bark, going down. Woodpeckers feed on the trunk and branches, digging in. Chickadees feed on the smaller twigs. Kinglets feed on the smaller twigs and foliage. Warblers feed on the ends of twigs, and in the air.

If you will stop and think about it, a growing crisis in our world is a lack of freshwater. Yet five-sixths of the world is filled with water! The problem is how to inexpensively desalinize seawater. Researchers have worked on the problem for years, without success.

Extracting salt from ocean water continues to be very expensive. Yet seabirds regularly do it, and without spending a penny. They drink seawater without any problems; for they have glands in their heads which discharge a highly concentrated salt solution into their nostrils, from where it drips back into the sea.

With such a built-in desalination plan, seabirds never need to drink freshwater. Without such a system, no bird could live in the oceans and seas. Large doses of salt are poisonous, leading to dehydration, overloaded kidneys, and a painful death. But if birds have such a highly successful method, why do we not copy it? It is a proven success, highly miniaturized, and costs the birds nothing. It requires no fuel oil, electricity, coal, or propane. Yet our scientists cannot duplicate what those little runny-nosed birds do.

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