|
DanJames -> RE: How do YECs explain predator/prey anatomy (4/3/2008 3:08:56 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Agahnim
quote:
Spiders can't chew their food, so they inject it with a venom that digests it, then they slurp up the digested food with their sieve mouth. Scorpion venom also digests the food for them. My hypothesis is that a spider or scorpion would be able to use this mechanism to eat any fruit with a sufficiently thick exocarp to contain digested pericarp, but not so think that a spider can't bite it. I would speculate that they had a berry diet.
I'm not positive, but I think snake venom also begins to digest its food before it swallows it. One might speculate that the venom aided the snake in digesting plant matter and some snakes secondarily lost their venom later in earth's history.
What you’re saying about spider venom also being for digestive purposes is right, but this isn’t true for snakes. Snake venom has a few different components, and almost all of them are there specifically to interfere with the prey animal’s cardiac system and cause it to lose control of its muscles. Other snakes, such as constrictors, don’t use venom at all but still eat and digest their prey in the same way as venomous snakes.
Do you have a guess like this about how sharks would have used their ability to detect blood, or how cheetahs would have used their anatomy that’s optimized for speed, if they weren’t originally predators?
Snake venom comes in a few different forms. I'm not familiar with it other than to say that it takes the place of salivary glands. Maybe someone else can fill in here.
As far as cats go, I do have some answers, but they aren't good, intellectually satisfying answers. Large cats use their claws for purposes other than killing. A cat does have the ability to run. It also has the ability to bound and climb trees, the latter of which it wouldn't be able to do without claws. Cats are a testimony to God's craftsmanship, and though carnivores today, could have subsisted on fruits and grass.
As for sharks, because they are fish, they and their food may not be considered alive in the biblical sense. The hierarchy of what's considered alive when it comes to non-land dwelling, air breathing animals gets fuzzy when you get down to the fish level. The doctrine comes from verses like Genesis 7:22 where animals that are alive are described as having the breath of life in their nostrils. Granted, a lot of fish do have nostrils and some of them do go to "lungs", which is why it's fuzzy. Suffice it to say, the organisms from vertebrate fish taxons down could be considered non-living in the biblical sense.
And here's a tidbit. Some theorize that sharks don't actually detect blood, but electricity from exposed nerve endings.
|
|
|
|