News to Note, June 14, 2008

1. Controversy Over a Visible Evolutionary Shift In Bacteria

Has E. coli evolved in front of our very eyes? A recent report in New Scientist claims that it has—and is a poke in the eye for creationists. But when we take a look at the facts, is this actually the case? Or is this another example of the emperor trying on new clothes?

2. Physicists Claim They Can Detect the Time Before the Big Bang

Physicists in the U.S. have claimed we may be able to detect time before time: what existed before the fabled big bang.

3. The Danger of Komodo Dragons

Rare and rarely seen outside of zoos, the Komodo dragon is the world’s largest lizard. But recently a group of stranded Britons had an encounter with a Komodo dragon that was reminiscent of a dinosaur-era battle.

4. Unicorn Deer found in Italy

A unicorn has been spotted in Italy—“fantasy becoming reality,” says one scientist. So what is the reality?

5. AP: “Scientists Find Monkeys Who Know How to Fish”

They may not be angling anytime soon on major television sports networks, but for the long-tailed macaques of Indonesia, fishing is apparently a way of life.

Four times in the past eight years, researchers from the Nature Conservancy and the Great Ape Trust have observed the macaques “scooping up small fish” with their hands along rivers in parts of Indonesia. This adds to the macaques’ many known food-acquiring skills, which includes crab and insect foraging, fruit consumption, and even theft from food-bearing tourists!

Other primates have been observed grabbing for fish, too—Erik Meijaard, one author of a study on the fishing macaques that appeared in the International Journal of Primatology, reported that Japanese macaques, chacma baboons, olive baboons, chimpanzees, and orangutans have all been seen catching fish. However, the study authors note that such fishing remains a “rare and isolated” behavior.

Notre Dame anthropologist Agustin Fuentes, who studies the macaques, reported that the finding helped show “the complexity of these animals.” We wonder how many read such news and think, “Wow, those apes are so intelligent—it seems every day there’s something that shows how similar they are to us!” But primate intelligence is a sign of common descent only if one believes, a priori, that similarities show common descent—in other words, only if one already presupposes evolution. For creationists, animals intelligently seeking food—from the “fishing” of macaques to a house cat’s clever attempts to get to the fish bowl—is a reminder not only of the intelligence God put in many of his creatures, but also of the carnivory brought about by the entrance of sin in the world.

6. New Research Shows Pure Scandinavian Race as Myth

Once again, scientific research backs up the Bible—and it’s nothing new that it supports the Bible’s description of humanity as a single race.

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