The Evolving Behavior

My following comments are in regards to an article found in, Science News v. 165, 4/24/04, p. 269.

"Male Spiders Amputate Organs, Run Faster" is about a species in which "The male spider grows to only about one-hundredth the size of a female, yet one pedipalp accounts for some 10 percent of his body mass."

The pedipalps are leg-like limbs on the front of the spider and are used for delivering sperm to the female. Larger pedipalps, more sperm, more reproductive success. However, two of them seem to be a bit too much for this tiny variety, slowing them down. Yet pedipalps naturally grow in pairs just like all the other limbs.

What's the male Tidarren sisyphoides spider to do? One researcher "rates the spiders as an 'extreme example' of a species that 'got stuck in a massive evolutionary conflict and had to evolve a behavior to get out.' "

Can't you just see the little guys scratching their cephalothorax, trying to figure out a way to evolve a solution? And what, you may be wondering (if you haven't heard or don't remember) is the way out that just happened to evolve? A mutation that caused one pedipalp to fall off early? Oh wait, that guy said something about a behavior... could it be something more complex? Oh yes, indeed.

According to a report in the, April 6 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "within hours after a young males penultimate [why can't they just say "next to last"?] molt prior to mating, he amputates one of his pedipalps." They're telling us spiders evolved the behavior of removing a limb? What, do they just chew it off? No, "He does this by attaching a strand of web silk to one pedipalp, tightens the silk thread by turning in circles, and then pushing at the pedipalp with his legs."

Sort of reminds me of pulling a loose tooth with a string. How could such a behavior evolve? What sort of mutations or other inheritable change (they certainly don't teach such things in little spider school) could have given spiders the programming for such otherwise bizarre and self-destructive behavior? Looks like another case of sheer faith in "it just happened" evolution.


Until Next Time,
David Bump

Lord Kelvin

In the last post I said we need to keep up with information such as that from the Paleoanthropology Society and Society for American Archaeology meeting in Montreal, Marach 30-April 4. Here is another item from this meeting which can be found here, Science News v. 165, 4/17/04, p. 254.

Degrees Kelvin: A tale of Genius, invention, and Tragedy might be an interesting biography about William Thomson, who became Lord Kelvin. He "published his first technical paper on heat flow" when only 16 years old.

Kelvin "made major findings in thermodynamics and electromagnetism" and "among his accomplishments are the perfecting of transatlantic telegraphy and the invention of a compass that operated even on the new steel-sided ships" and also "was elevated to the British peerage...the first scientist so honored."

Best of all, of course, he "opposed the doctrines of evolution" -- of course, in this book, that's supposed to be a BAD thing, something perhaps due to his age, "when his demeanor became cantankerous and he began to espouse some unpopular and embarrassing views. For instance, he expressed reservations about the existence of atoms..."

I don't know what his exact views on atoms were, but our view of them is not the same as it was then. One of his big arguments against evolution was that his famous thermodynamic calculations revealed that Earth's interior should be cooled solid if it were as old as the evolutionists said.

I believe when reading a review of this book in, Nature, that I pointed out that the author forgot that the evolutionists of the time had no good response to this, but just believed on faith that something had kept the Earth's interior hot and molten all that time.

Later, the discovery of radioactive materials was said to solve the problem -- that's what I was taught. But I recently read in a Nature article that Earth's heat is still in excess of what radioactive materials can account for.

At any rate, it shows the philosophical, emotional, and spiritual committment that evolutionists have had from the start, when someone of Kelvin's stature could show mathematically that there couldn't have been enough time for evolution, and yet the evolutionary movement continued to grow without a hitch.


Until Next Time,
David Bump