The Dragonfly The clotting mechanism is necessary for survival in animals and humans, because the blood circulation system is pressurized, and a simple cut or wound would prove fatal if the bleeding were not stopped. Hemophilia is a life-threatening disease in which part of the clotting apparatus is crippled. When a cut occurs, molecular signals cause various proteins to activate to create a complex meshwork that entraps the blood cells, forming the initial clot. Clotting involves over 30 distinct individual reactions, each of which is vital to heal a wound and each of which is exceedingly complex. The coordination, order, timing, and rates of action must be exact. Omitting even one of the reactions, inserting an unwanted step, or altering the timing of a step would result in death. This is why the blood clotting system is called “a cascade, a system where one component activates another component” (Alan Gillen, Body by Design, p. 74). * The clot must form quickly. * It must form the full length of the wound with sufficient coverage to stop the bleeding. * It must form only in the precise location of a wound and only enough to close the wound and not close down the blood vessels (otherwise it could block circulation, which is what causes heart attacks and strokes). * The wound must be cleansed of germs and damaged cellular tissues. This is accomplished by an increase in the flow of blood enriched with white blood cells. * The clotting process must not only stop the flow of blood but also develop a new skin cover for permanent healing. The surrounding skin cells increase the rate of reproduction to create a bridge of new skin. * At the precise time when healing is completed, other protein machinery must remove the clot. The intricate process begins with the creation of a protein mesh to close the wound and trap the blood. It is composed of a protein called fibrinogen that is carried in the blood plasma. Another protein, thrombin, slices pieces of fibrinogen to create fibrin and connect them together to form a network. Long threads criss-cross the fibrin to entrap the blood cells. Consider the amazing intelligence and communication that is involved throughout this process at the cellular level. Russell Doolittle has tried to provide an evolutionary scenario for the blood clotting system, but biologist Michael Behe demonstrates that Doolittle’s scenario is simply a “just-so” story. “What he has done is to hypothesize a series of steps in which clotting proteins appear one after another. Yet, as I will show in the next section, the explanation is seriously inadequate because no reasons are given for the appearance of the proteins, no attempt is made to calculate the probability of the proteins’ appearance, and no attempt is made to estimate the new proteins’ properties. ... “The first thing to notice is that no causative factors are cited. Thus tissue factor ‘appears,’ fibrinogen ‘is born,’ antiplasmin ‘arises,’ TPA ‘springs forth,’ a cross-linking protein ‘is unleashed,’ and so forth. What exactly, we might ask, is causing all this springing and unleashing? Doolittle appears to have in mind a step-by-step Darwinian scenario involving the undirected, random duplication and recombination of gene pieces. But consider the enormous amount of luck needed to get the right gene pieces in the right places. ... “The second question to consider is the implicit assumption that a protein made from a duplicated gene would immediately have the new, necessary properties. ... “The third problem in the blood-coagulation scenario is that it avoids the crucial issues of how much, how fast, when, and where. Nothing is said about the amount of clotting material initially available, the strength of the clot that would be formed by a primitive system, the length of time the clot would take to form once a cut occurred, what fluid pressure the clot would resist, how detrimental the formation of inappropriate clots would be, or a hundred other such questions” (Darwin’s Black Box, chapter 4). The blood clotting system cannot have emerged piecemeal. Dean Kenyon, Ph.D. in biophysics from Stanford University, observes: “In fact, having a primitive, poorly controlled clotting system would probably be more dangerous to an animal, and therefore less advantageous, than having no such system at all! ... It is important to realize that no one has ever offered a credible hypothesis to explain how the blood clotting system could have started and subsequently evolved. ... “Virtually all biochemical systems, large and small, exhibit coherent integration of distinct parts to give a whole entity with a separate purpose. This includes photosynthesis, cell replication, carbohydrate, protein, and lipid metabolism, vision, the immune system, and numerous others. Like a car engine, biological systems can only work after they have been assembled by someone who knows what the final result will be” (Davis and Kenyon, Of Pandas and People, p. 145).

The Dragonfly

Article and photo by D.W. Cloud

The dragonfly is another amazing icon of creation. There are nearly 5,000 varieties, ranging in size from 3/4 inch to 7 1/2 inches. An extinct variety measured 30 inches from wing tip to wing tip.

Consider its life cycle. It hatches from an egg in a larval form called a nymph that lives in the water and breathes through internal gills. The nymph is ugly and colorless, but it has a “jet propulsion” system whereby it squirts water out rapidly to create fast movement when alarmed. After a few months to three years, the nymph crawls out of the water, begins to breathe air, attaches itself to the stem of a plant, undergoes metamorphosis in one night, and emerges from its larval body as a beautiful flying, air-breathing dragonfly. Though it has lived in the water all its life until this point, it is immediately an expert flyer and spends most of the rest of its life flitting through the air like an insect edition of the hummingbird.

Consider its eyes. It has two large compound eyes, each composed of up to 30,000 facets containing a lens installed at a perfect angle in conjunction with all of the other lenses. This gives it a nearly 360 degree field of vision. It also has three smaller simple eyes called ocelli on the top and front of its head. 80% of its mental processes are devoted to vision. It sees in color and can detect ultraviolet light. The dragonfly’s vision is so amazing that it is being studied by the Australian National University with the goal of improving robot flight. Dr. Richard Berry, who is in charge of this project, says, “The ocelli of dragonflies are exceptionally well tuned to provide fast, sensitive and directionally selective information about the world” (“Dragonfly Vision Could Aid Robot Flight,” Science Alert, Jan. 28, 2009).

Consider its wings. The wing membranes are thinner than paper and very strong. They are reinforced by veins or tubes only 1/10th of a millimeter thick, which act as “spars” for the wings as well as tubes for the cables of the nervous system and for the transportation of the blood fluid.

Consider its flying ability. It can fly up, down, sideways, or backwards and can change direction in an instant. It can glide. It can hover and then rapidly accelerate up to 35 miles per hour. It can beat each pair of wings together or separately; the rear wings can be out of phase with the front wings; and it can even move each wing independently, thus allowing for extreme maneuvers. It can catch other flying insects, such as flies and mosquitoes, in the air, either with its mouth or by forming a little basket with its legs and their bristly spines.

Its amazing neck muscles allow the dragonfly to move its head sideways 180 degrees, back 70 degrees, and down 40 degrees.

Consider its beauty. Dragonflies are brilliantly colored and typically are multi-colored. They can be green, yellow, blue, red, fuchsia, maroon, orange, pink, gold, and black. The colors come in earth tones as well as metallic varieties. These are formed in three ways: pigmentation (e.g., melanin produces yellows, reds, and browns), wax coating that diffuses light (similar to the coating on some shiny fruits), and light reflecting chitin scales, which perfectly diffract various parts of the light wave to create brilliant metallic colors.