Professor of Biology James Hanken used to tell a story about rabbits in his organismic biology course that has gained new significance in recent years.Source: INTELLECTUAL CURRENTS: Biologists Here Join PR Offensive To Counter Critics.Until the teaching schedule for the team-taught Biological Sciences 51, Integrative Biology of Organisms, changed this year, Hanken would talk about rabbits digestive systems in lecture. The animals can absorb the nutrients from plant matter only in the small intestine, but food is digested in a part of the gut thats farther downstream. So how do plant nutrients finally get into the rabbits bloodstream having already passed through the small intestine undigested?
They secrete these things through their anus, eat them, and pass them back through the small intestine, Hanken explains.
And then he adds, Now you tell me, wheres the intelligence in that design?
Why do rabbits have digestive systems that function so poorly that they must eat their own feces?
This is an incredible proposition. One of the most successful species on earth would have to be the rabbit! The rabbit's mode of existence is obviously very efficient (what about the saying they breed like rabbits?). Just because eating feces may be abhorrent to humans, does not mean it is inefficient for the rabbit! Indeed rabbits have a special pouch called the cecum, containing bacteria, at the beginning of the large intestine. These bacteria aid digestion, just as bacteria in the rumen of cattle and sheep aid digestion. The rabbit produces two types of fecal pellet, a hard one and a special soft one coming from the cecum. It is only the latter which is eaten to enrich the diet with the nutrients produced by the bacteria in the cecum. In other words, this ability of rabbits is part of their design; it is not something they have learnt to do because they have digestive systems which function so poorly. It is part of the variety of design which speaks of creation, not evolution.
Vestigial Organs: What do they prove?
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Cecum. Hence, cecal "pellets."
It's a bit disturbing to watch the first time you see a bunny recycling its own output.
That might be a persuasive argument to some people, but it is not a scientific argument. It is just another variation on the old underlying metaphysical, theological assumption, used to great effect by Darwin, that God wouldn't have created it this way because it's not 'perfect'.
Cordially,