Creationism, Evolution, and Hybrid Animals

James Owen, in a National Geographic News story, explains how a growing number of “hybrid species” have been observed in the wild. (Such hybrid species are the offspring of two distinct animal species, such as a lion and a tiger (see “Zonkeys, Ligers, and Wolphins, Oh My!”). Noting that the process is common in plants, Owen explains, “This evolutionary process […] has long been considered extremely rare among animals.” But what is considered an evolutionary process is actually an important testament to the original created kinds.

The Bible indicates that God created the original animals “after their kind”—and accordingly reproduce within these respective kinds from Genesis 7:2–3 where respective kinds have a male and female. For example, dogs would give birth to dogs, elephants would give birth to elephants, and so forth. In fact, there’s an entire subdivision of creation science, called baraminology, that is devoted to categorizing the created kinds.

Over the millennia since the Curse, information in the genomes of animals has steadily decreased via natural selection causing speciation, such that in many cases, it is said that several separate species exist within what would be considered one biblical kind. For example, rather than one “deer” kind, we have over two dozen deer species. These inflated numbers are frequently used by Bible critics who claim Noah couldn’t have fit “millions of species” on the Ark, and thus the Bible cannot be trusted or read literally.

Reading about such interbreeding species, however, is a reminder that the original kinds incorporated many of today’s species. Noah’s Ark would have had sufficient room for representatives of each kind, and those representatives contained the genetic information to repopulate the earth, leading to the species we see today.