Page 19 - Devotion Among Animals Revealing the Work of God

Awareness in Animals

caterpillar's pupa. The others are all dummies. If a bird turns its atten-
tion towards any one of the dry leaves, the odds are six to one against
its finding the caterpillar. 3
It's self-evident that these behaviors are all intelligent and pre-
meditated. But is it really possible for a caterpillar with such a micro-
scopic brain and simple nervous system to display such behavior? The
caterpillar does not have the faculty of thought to let it plan ahead. Nor
can it possibly have learned this stratagem from another caterpillar
and, in reality, it's not even aware of the dangers that birds might pre-
sent. So who came up with this idea of how to mislead the caterpillar's
predators?
Were you to ask an evolutionist these questions, he would never
give you clear and satisfying answers. But when cornered there's one
expression that evolutionists resort to: instincts. They say that any such
animal behaviors are instinctive. In the case we've just examined, the
first question they should be asked is, "Define instinct." If such behav-
ior is instinctive, as with the caterpillar concealing itself in a leaf, there
must be some mechanism or force that drives it to do so. Similarly,
some similar force must impel the beaver to build its dams and lodges.
And, as we can deduce by the first syllable of the word instinct, this

mechanism or force must lie somewhere within the creature.

What is the Source of Instincts?

Scientists use the word instinct to define animals' inborn behav-
iors. Always left unanswered, however, are the questions of how these
instinctive behaviors first appeared, and how animals developed these
instincts and passed them down through later generations.
In his book, The Great Evolution Mystery, evolutionist and ge-
neticist Gordon Rattray Taylor admits this logical dead end:
When we ask ourselves how any instinctive pattern of behav-
iour arose in the first place and became hereditarily fixed, we are
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given no answer...

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