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Could the giant flying fox be a primate? In the 18th century, scientists weren’t quite sure what to do with bats. Some wanted to classify them as primates, while others thought they should have their own category. Since 1780, all 950 known species of bats have been classified in their own category. The bat order is divided into microbats and megabats. Microbats have an average wingspan of less than a foot. Megabats are larger. The giant flying fox has a wingspan of six feet!
The evolutionary link between microbats and megabats is dissolving as scientists learn more about them. Although megabats and microbats are very clearly bats, they are constructed in importantly different ways. Microbats rely mainly on echolocation to navigate. Megabats have very large eyes, so that they can see like owls in low light. The nerves that connect the eyes of microbats to the brain cross. As a result, the image from the right eye goes to the left brain, and the left eye feeds its image to the right brain. However, megabats are wired with both eyes feeding into both sides of the brain. This arrangement is otherwise unique to primates!
If bats evolved, these new findings mean that bats must have evolved at least twice! It also means that some bats evolved from monkey-like creatures!
It makes far more sense to admire God’s unlimited creativity. We can logically reason that God gave His larger bats eyesight like that of a monkey, because their needs are similar.
1 Corinthians 2:9-10
“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”
Prayer: Dear Father, I thank You that what You have made is so pleasing to the mind and to the eye. I ask that our growing scientific knowledge would continue to make it more difficult to deny You. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
REF.: The eyes have it: megabats are primates. Discover. Image: Grey headed flying fox, Andrew Mercer (www.baldwhiteguy.co.nz), CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
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