Page 120 - Wonderful Creatures: Children! Have You Ever Thought ?

WONDERFUL CREATURES

THE POWERFUL

MEMORY OF JAYS

Jays gather acorns and bury them in the ground for future use.
Sometimes they bury up to a thousand acorns in a day. Everything

in a forest looks alike. This is why it is difficult even for human beings
to find a certain place in a forest. So how can jays find the places

where they have hidden their acorns? They act intelligently and mark
these places using tree branches or pieces of stone. Still, it is quite

difficult to find something buried in a forest. However experiments
have revealed that these birds can find their acorns even nine

months later. It is a miracle of creation that these birds have such a
powerful memory that they can mark the places where they hide

their food and then remember these places.

It is certainly not possible to explain the decision of a jay, which does
not have intellect as we understand it, to hide acorns by burying

them in the ground or marking these secret places to find them in

the future as occurring by coincidence.

Burying a thousand acorns and marking their places with stones and
branches in an orderly way is certainly something that a bird cannot

achieve on its own. It is very natural for a bird to eat an acorn as
soon as it finds it. However, only an intelligent being can save it for

future use, mark the place where it is hidden and know this mark
later.

A bird cannot do any of these by itself. Therefore, we see that there

is a Being Who possesses endless wisdom, has power over all things

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