101 Proofs For God: #36 The Zoo

When was the last time that you went to the Zoo?

I don’t know about you, but I have always been fascinated at the zoo. The educational opportunities are endless and the exhibits are from all over the world, not just our country. It was always really special to go as a kid myself and then later to take my own kids when they were young. Now I’m looking forward to taking my grandchildren when they come along.

What kinds of animals do they put in a Zoo? Do you see dogs and cats, squirrels, robins and starlings, cows or horses there? No. They will always try to put animals there that you will never see in your neighborhood. They go for animals that are somehow amazing, especially for kids.

The largest Zoos in the world are Toronto Zoo and the Omaha Zoo, both with over 17,000 species of animals. Think about that. How long would it take you to study each unique one? Each has a totally different set of DNA and different physical characteristics, lifestyle, digestive system, reproductive systems, locomotion, on and on.

How many animals are there that you have never seen? How about fish or birds? Then there are plants and insects. I saw recently that there are 383 different species of hummingbirds alone.

Nobody knows how many species there are in the world. I searched around for estimates of how many species there are of all the kinds of living beings. Here is a link to a New York Times article that reports on an estimate of 8.7 million species.[1] But there are estimates as high as 100 million. Researchers are reporting over 15,000 new species discovered EVERY YEAR. Scientists have named and categorized ONLY 1.3 million so far.

If a zoo has 17,000 species, it only has 1.3% of the already named species, which is a small fraction of the estimated total number of species.

http://animals.about.com/od/zoologybasics/a/howmanyspecies.htm

There are 43,271 cataloged species of fungi of an estimated 660,000 to 5.1 million. There are approximately 6,500 species of millipedes. Mollusks, slugs, and snails make up an estimated 100,000 species. Starfish, sea urchins, and their relatives make up 6,500 species.

There are an estimated 5,000 species of mammals, 9,000 to 10,000 species of birds, 23,500 species of fish, 1 million to 30 million species of insects, 298,000 species of plants. The most amazing fact of all is that scientists really have no idea of how many species are yet to be discovered and estimates vary all over the place.

“We’ve only touched the surface of understanding animal life,” said entomologist Brian Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences. “We’ve discovered just 10 percent of all living things on this planet.” [2]

I personally guess he might be overestimating what we know.

I’ve collected a bunch of pictures below from websites of various zoos that show some strange and unusual creatures in their zoos. Look at these pictures and imagine that there are literally millions of other beings for each one of them. This is an extremely small sampling of amazing creatures.

If you want to be even more amazed, just go to Google Images and do a search for moths, butterflies, birds, snakes, dogs, cats, fish, or whatever else you can possibly think of. Then look over those images for a while.

Evolutionists say they believe that every single one of these species exists totally and absolutely by accident, without any intelligence behind it. It was all godless mutations and survival of the fittest. They want me to believe that every color, shape, and ability came into existence because it was the result of millions of mutations and then natural selection choosing the character trait because it was the most "beneficial" for survival. To me that is so implausible as to be incomprehensible. I am flabbergasted that anyone could believe it.

I hope that they will go spend some time at the Zoo. In fact, let’s all go there.

There has to be God.
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[1] How Many Species? A Study Says 8.7 Million, but It’s Tricky. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/science/30species.html

[2] http://www.livescience.com/4593-greatest-mysteries-species-exist-earth.html