Genesis Animal Sanctuary with Michael Maughon

All right, how's everybody doing tonight? Y 'all doing well? So tonight we are gonna be looking at some of the amazing design in God's animals. So this is called Ask the Animals and it comes from a verse in Job.

It's Job 12, seven through nine. It says, ask the animals and they will teach you or the birds in the sky and they will tell you or speak to the earth and it will teach you or let the fish in the sea inform you.

Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? When you look super closely at creation, there's no way it could just happen. And we're gonna look at some really amazing things that God put into these animals so that they can survive.

Creation, Design, and the Biblical Kind

Competing world views. So you have created or you have not created. In the origin of the species, Darwin said, first, why if species have descended from one another, from other species by fine gradation, do we not see innumerable transition forms?

Why is not all nature in confusion instead of species being as we see, well-defined? So Darwin noticed that this was a problem. He's not seeing all these transition forms that he thought he should see.

In Genesis, God says that he created the animals after their kind. So a kind of animal is similar to the family level in our current scientific classification. So you have your different kinds of animals and a dog kind can change and it can look different, but it's always gonna be a dog.

The cat kind is always gonna be a cat. It's not gonna go from one species to another, which is what the theory of Darwinian evolution says. From goo to you, by way of the zoo. And it's really fun when you look at what Darwin said and what the Bible said and what we see lines up perfectly with what God told us in his scripture.

The Design of the Green-Winged Macaw

So our first animal of the night is cracker. Cracker is a green-winged macaw and she is perfectly designed to do what she does. If you look at her face, you can see those feathers on her face right there.

Each green-winged macaw has a unique facial pattern of those feathers. It's like their fingerprints. So you can look and you can tell the different birds apart by that facial pattern right there. If you look at cracker, she looks like a rotisserie chicken.

She has no feathers. So she came out of an abuse situation where she was being neglected and she was in a really small cage. And so when parents in captivity get stressed, they will self-mutilate, they'll pluck their feathers, they'll bite their feathers, and sometimes they'll even bite their skin.

So she's been plucking for so long that she's damaged a lot of the follicles on her chest and those feathers will no longer grow back, which is pretty sad. So she'll be naked for the rest of her life.

And then it's also like a habit. If you start biting your nails, it's really hard to stop biting your nails. And it's kind of the same with them. Once they start, it's pretty hard to get them to stop.

But these guys, so some of the design features. This beak right here is absolutely incredible. God designed them to be able to eat some of the hardest nuts on the planet. So when you give them like a walnut, if you've ever cracked a walnut before, they're pretty hard to crack and she can pop it like it's nothing.

Like right there, she's already into it. I don't know if y 'all can see that well, but she's already got that nut out and she's eating it.

And That's a handy nut cracker.

Yeah, yeah, incredibly powerful beak. I mean, she could break my finger with that beak if she wanted to. Really, really powerful animal. You don't think of birds as being like super powerful, but their beak is incredible.

They can also hold their food with their hands. They're really good at climbing. And then one of the really cool things about macaws is these guys will eat unripe fruit. So there's certain type of fruit where they're from in the Amazon, Central South America, and they'll eat this fruit and it's toxic and it'll kill them.

So they will fly to a certain mud bank along the river and they'll eat this clay. And that clay will like absorb that acid and keep them alive. How would the first bird know how to do that? Because if they ate that food without going and eating the clay, it would kill them.

So that's just one thing that God gave them the know-how to be able to eat this food before other animals can. So it opens up a new food resource for this bird and then they can go eat that clay so it doesn't kill them.

Birds are probably my favorite animals. They are really, really cool. So the macaws are really destructive. They're really loud and they're really hard pets, but they're really, really smart. She has a pretty good vocabulary.

She can say, hi, hello, cracker, what you doing? She can say all kinds of stuff, although she doesn't talk very often. Their tail feathers are about as long as their body. So she has super long tail feathers.

This is a tail feather from another bird that's about her size. They're really, really long.

Wow.

She is the second largest macaw in the world, like her species, which is a green-winged macaw. The only one that's bigger is the hyacinth macaw. Probably one of my favorite facts about birds that's just, it's incredible.

And it couldn't just evolve because if you didn't have this in place, they would die really easily. God thought of absolutely everything when he made his creation. When you look at their wings, can I see your wing for a second?

Their wings are absolutely symmetrical. So when she holds her wings out like this, you can look at the feathers. They're the exact same on one side as they are on the other. They're an exact mirror image.

You can map them out and label them. They're the same absolute mirror image. When they molt, so once a year, a bird, well, these guys, once or twice a year, depending on the species, will go into a molt.

And these guys shed their feathers in a pattern and they shed in matched pairs. So here's a few that I grabbed this past week. They lose the same feather. So if you look at these, let me set her down for a second.

When you look at these, this is an exact mirror image feather. This is from a red-fronted macaw and he's molting right now. So he's replacing all those feathers and they'll lose one on one side. And within 48 hours, they'll lose the exact same feather on the other wing.

That is design. Time and time again, I go in and I pick out matched pairs. Within a day or two, I'll get the same feather just from the other wing. That's incredible, guys. God thought of everything when he designed these animals.

Absolutely incredible. So you get these matched pairs. The current thought in evolutionary theory is that birds evolved from reptiles or dinosaurs. The feathers are assumed to have evolved out of a scale.

But when you look at a feather, they are extremely, extremely complex structures. A scale on a reptile is like a fold in the skin. So if you take like a piece of cloth and you fold it over, that's basically what a scale is.

There's no follicle. The birds have follicles, they grow their feathers, and then they're super, super complex. So the wing feathers like this right here, it has a shaft down the middle, right here, it's called the rachis.

And then they have two veins on each side. And then each one of these veins has like 400 barbs. And let me see if I can get a single barb off here for you. So that right there, I don't know if y 'all can see that.

You probably can't. That's a barb right there. Each one of those barbs have barbules. So each one of these little barbs has about 800 barbules, which stick off of it. And on those, there's little hooklets.

And so if a bird ruffs up its feather like that, it can take its beak and those hooks stick to the next feather and it has a built-in Velcro. So God gave them a way to be able to fix those feathers. And that Velcro is microscopic structures that stick together.

If they didn't have that, they wouldn't be able to fly.

I know they lose you when I talk, as Joyce told me, but I'm gonna quick say about the Velcro. Isn't that, didn't man take the Velcro design from the feather?

I think they took it out of nature, but I think they took it, at least one of the things I said was, or heard was from like cockroaches, like the little seeds that stick to you. They have little hooks that attach to whatever brushes up against them.

The reason I think that is because I think Velcro has been around for a long time and the Velcro structures in a feather can only be seen under a electron microscope. So they're super, super tiny, but yeah, biomimicry, they took the idea from Velcro from nature.

I don't know if it was a feather, but this Velcro is like extremely, extremely complex. A scale is a very simple structure. So to evolve something over time like this, to get to flight when you don't have a purpose, like you're not trying to fly, it just happens.

It would never happen there. It's too perfectly designed to just happen and be perfectly symmetrical, the feathers to be perfect where they need to be, to be stiff. The wing feathers are usually stiffer and they're asymmetrical.

So if you look at this, this is the leading edge of the feather. And then this is the tailing edge. When you look at the other feathers like this, this is a contour feather and it is what gives them their really beautiful like shape and makes them look all slick and that aerodynamic design.

And these guys are much more symmetrical. They also have down feathers, which are like the best insulating things on the planet. Keeps them really warm. And they're just perfectly designed. You can't get this out of a reptile.

Really awesome creature. I'm trying to think, is there any other things? Does anybody have any questions about Cracker or Macaw? And then we'll move on. I don't want to take too much time.

Okay.

If anybody has a question, you can raise your hand or if nobody else is speaking. I know I've been doing this for a while, but I've asked several questions already.

And also if you're watching on Facebook, then you can type your questions into the comments and I'll be sure to ask them for you.

Thank you, Terry. Joyce, you don't have any questions?

I just like birds. Especially the birds of prey.

Me too.

And I had chickens growing up and they were really, they all had their own little personality and they talk to you. And if you raise them for babies, they will come and sit on your lap and everything.

What is your bird's name, Michael?

Her name is Cracker.

Cracker, that's it. Does she stay in the house or does she stay outside? Or is she like a pet? Terry, who was just talking, her mom has turtles that come through the dog door.

That's fun. Yeah, so we, our animal sanctuary is right next to our house. So it's like a hundred feet over to our building where we keep all of our exotics. So we don't keep animals in our house.

Can Cracker fly?

She cannot fly. So if you've seen the movie, Rio, Rio couldn't fly either. She never learned how to fly. I'm assuming she's been in a cage her entire life and those muscles kind of atrophy. So she can, she flies like a rock.

Not very graceful. She goes straight down.

Hi Cracker. How do you want a cracker?

But she's a super sweet bird. She's really happy now. She is in a big aviary with one other macaw and his name is Brutus. And he's a hybrid between a scarlet and a blue and gold.

They're not going to have babies, are they?

They should not. I don't think so.

Did you have a talk with them or is it just something that won't happen?

Usually, so we're not trying to breed them. So if they do, we just probably won't let their eggs hatch because their lifespan is 80 to a hundred years.

Oh yeah.

It looks like Jeff.

Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

They just live a really long time. And so we have 20, I want to say 28 parrots at this point and all but one are rescues.

Oh my. And do you have somewhere set up where people can donate?

I can send a link if people are interested. Yeah, through our website, but I usually raise money as a missionary through Doe River.

Okay.

And then Jeff has a question or comment. He says, I think birds are warm-blooded, at least most of them. Can you confirm if they are cold-blooded? I also understand the female parent has the genetic variation for determining offspring male or female.

And how does that compare with reptiles? It's in the chat box too, you can say that.

So these guys are warm-blooded. And so reptiles, that's another thing that's just way far off. Their body temperature is going to be like 105 degrees. So they are really hot body temperatures. If you touch her, she feels really, really warm.

So most birds I believe are from like 102 to 110 degree body temperature. So they are warm-blooded and they have the fastest metabolism of any creature on earth. So they burn through stuff really quick with flying.

Whereas a reptile, like some of our snakes will go into brumation for the winter and they won't eat for four months. And when they start eating again, they're fine. They can go a really long time without eating.

These guys go for a week without eating and they're going to die, maybe less than that. They lose weight really, really quickly. So with a lot of our birds, sorry, we check the keel. And if you can, there's a bone right here and you want to make sure that that is, you can see it but it's not like there's actually meat right there.

If they lose that and that it's sinking in right there and you can really feel that it's really sharp then your bird's getting a little skinny. And when a bird gets sick, really hard to tell when they're sick, but they'll start losing weight.

So we try to keep up with that because that's the best way to tell if they get sick. And then on the other question, I don't know how to answer that, but birds do lay eggs. I don't know about the male or female who carries what but I can look that up.

I think that's a genetic question, geneticist.

Yeah, I'm not sure about that, but they do lay eggs and the macaws will lay them in a hollow in a nest and they guard them and their incubation. I'm not actually sure how long the incubation is on these guys, but yeah.

Okay, and Michael, one more question before you move on. From Facebook, Linda says, I understand that all birds molt in patched pairs.

Yeah, so they molt in mashed pairs. So some, not all birds, but they'll molt in mashed pairs. So when they lose one feather on one side they'll lose the same feather on the other side which is an incredible design feature.

There are some species of, I believe waterfowl that will molt like all their wing feathers at the same time. So they can't fly for about six weeks. With the feathers, it's like it's keratin. It's like a hair.

So if you cut it, it doesn't hurt them. So when you hear someone like trimming a bird's wings they'll cut these feathers so they can't fly and they won't grow back until they molt. But if you pull a feather out, it'll grow back in six weeks.

All right, any last questions on our green wing macaw cracker?

I think we're ready to move on.

All right, let me get our next animal. This is Alex. Yeah, I can get in the screen.

Ooh.

Yeah, this is Alex the owl. Alex, and yes, that is spelled O-W-L-E-X. It is Alex. He is a Eurasian eagle owl. So this is one of the largest species of owl in the world. And he is incredibly designed.

We're going to start up at the top of his head and we'll work our way down. If you see these little tufts sticking off of his head, those are called ear tufts. They are feathers. They have nothing to do with hearing.

His ears, if you can find the ears on your head, you can find the ears on his head. They're going to be right there. And his facial disc channels that sound to his ear. Their hearing is about 10 times more sensitive than ours.

Really, really good hearing. So his ear is going to be right there. So these guys, the ear tuft aids in camouflage and it's also a mood indicator. So when he gets grumpy, he'll slick those back and you can tell that he's in a bad mood.

The most notable feature of owls, usually if I ask the question like, okay, what do you notice about this bird? Most people usually notice his eyes. Let's see if I can get him a little bit closer to the camera.

So his eyes are huge. They are massive and they're not eyeballs like we have. They're more like eye cylinders. So they're kind of elongated and they go back into his head. His eyeballs, if yours were the same as his, your eyes would be the size of grapefruits compared to your head.

Like crazy big eyes. And they're elongated so he can't look side to side like we can without moving his head. So God gave him the ability to rotate that head 270 degrees. So if I'm holding him sideways like this, he can turn his head all the way around and look back at you.

That's three quarters of a turn. Really, really impressive. And they can turn their head around backwards, look up, all that stuff.

They can look

Is that from his neck muscles that makes it? I've always wanted, I wanted to ask this at Doe River too. How come they can do that?

Yeah, so if you're mammals, so humans, mice, giraffes, anything has seven cervical vertebrae. Birds have anywhere from 13 to 24 cervical vertebrae. Or yeah, 13 to 24. These guys have 14. So he has 14 neck bones and that lets him turn his head way further than we can.

And does that, and yeah, it's the muscles too, but the neck bones help him out a lot. The next kind of cool feature is his wings. This is probably my favorite feature about owls. Really, really cool. They have a fringe on the leading edge of their primary feathers.

So these wing feathers right here, there's a little fringe on those feathers. And when they flap, it breaks up the air turbulence and gives them silent flight. So these guys, he can only fly about 35 miles an hour, which isn't super fast for a bird.

And, but he's completely quiet. When he goes and he gets going, you can't hear him. He's quiet. They have really soft feathers. Their feathers are a little bit like more flexible than the parrot feathers.

These are pretty stiff and they make a loud noise. His are a little bit more flexible. And then that fringe, silent flight. And then his feet. I don't know if I can get up close on his feet. Let me see if I can do this really quick.

All right, so his feet, let's see if y 'all can see that. His feet are incredible. He has about an inch, inch and a half long talon.

Right there.

And his grip strength is eight to 10 times the average human. It's about 800 pounds per square inch. Incredibly powerful feet. They can take down anything from like a small rodent to a fox or a small deer.

And their grip strength, they don't even need their talons for smaller stuff. They hit it so hard and they squeeze it so hard that it'll usually kill it upon impact. And they just will asphyxiate it with those feet.

Those talons are helpful though, they do help. Once they get their prey, if it's too big, they will tear it into little bits and they'll swallow it. If it's a small like rat, they can swallow it whole and they don't digest the bones in the fur.

So in their stomach gets coated with a slick coating and they vomit up those bones and fur into what they call an owl pellet. But it's a good design because it is coated in something. And that way when they vomit it up, it's not scratching their esophagus.

Really, really cool design.

I know a lot of, like as a former homeschool mom, that we dissected out an owl pellet. Like that's a pretty common thing that you can buy them as specimens and see what the owl ate and vomited back up.

Yeah, so you can dig through the owl pellet and you can see what the owl's been eating and they will throw up that owl pellet before they eat again to make room for it. These birds, I didn't point it out on Cracker, but she had a big ball on her throat and that was her crop.

It's kind of like a food storage container. Owls do not have that. So their food goes straight into their stomach. They digest it and then they throw up that owl pellet.

Yeah.

Does anybody have any questions about Alex the owl?

I do.

So that owl pellet, is there any kind of nation on earth that makes it into tea? I know the Chinese make a lot of things into tea, like in coffee.

That's a good question. So I don't know who did this, but some scientists were researching it and they like tasted it. So that like outer coating is sweet, that slick coating that's on that pellet. So they potentially could, but I do not know the answer to that question.

That's okay. Because I think in South America, there's a rodent that eats coffee beans and then it passes it and then they collect up the past coffee bean. And I didn't know, but it does taste very good.

So I was just wondering if there was like an owl pellet tea or, okay. So next question.

Well, Bill wants to know if he is nocturnal only.

So this particular species of owl is crepuscular or crepuscular, which means they're active at dusk and dawn. So the twilight hours of the day is his preferred hunting time. They will hunt during the day and they will hunt at night, but their typical time is gonna be that dusk and dawn twilight hours.

Rachel says she's seen owls in the daytime sitting on power lines.

Yep.

So a lot of people think that when an animal is nocturnal, that it doesn't come out during the day or it sleeps all day. He's pretty active during the day. He comes out and he'll fly around and check things out in his aviary.

So they do come out during the day and I've seen owls hunting during the day. It's just not their norm. They're normally gonna hunt at night because during the day, they don't have the advantage of stealth.

Their eyes are so big that they have incredible low light vision and then they're quiet. They can't, most of the stuff that they eat is dead before they even know what got them because they're ambush predators.

So their best time to hunt is at night or those twilight hours, but that doesn't mean they won't hunt in the day.

And what is this guy's name again?

His name is Alex and he is a Eurasian owl.

And why is he at the rescue?

So this is one of our ambassador animals. So our main focus at the rescue is education. So certain species we do go and purchase for teaching.

He sure is beautiful. Anybody have any other questions?

Nothing from Facebook right now.

Okay.

So we were working with local species of owls. I was working with a wildlife rescue and in that wildlife rescue, we were working with some like great horned owls and different stuff. And they were a lot harder to work with.

They were wild and they're hard to tame down and they would get stressed if you used them a lot. And one of the owls that we worked with was very foul tempered. And she would like just try to kill you any chance she got.

And this glove right here is three layers of cowhide. It's a really thick glove and a great horn's grip strength is about 500 pounds per square inch. And my wife was manning this bird and it grabbed her, it footed her and it bruised her hand through the glove.

That's how powerful these guys are.

Wow.

Just amazing, amazing birds. But when you look at them, they're very specifically designed. This did not just happen out of a reptile. This was a designed animal. God put in all these features to this animal.

And as much as they breed, they might change in appearance a little bit, but it's always gonna be an owl. This is part of the owl kind. And he's never not gonna be an owl. No matter how much time passes, you can give him 13 billion years or whatever you want to.

And he's still gonna be an owl because that's what God designed him as.

I have a quick question along that line. Now, you can breed horses and zebras. Can you breed owls with anything else? I mean, what can it?

So great question. So that is along the created kinds. So your horses, your zebras, your donkeys are all in the same created kind. So they can breed together. So you could breed him with a different species of owl.

Like I could probably breed him with a great horned owl and I would get a hybrid, but it would still be an owl. So we have hybrid macaws where people take the different species and they breed them together to get something that looks different, but it's always a macaw, same with dogs.

There's 500 breeds of dog, but they're all dogs.

Okay, yeah, I was just wondering because like you said, you can take, I've seen ducks that have intermingled and they look weird, but they're still ducks, of course.

Yeah, and so there's usually a limitation on that. Usually a lot of the hybrids become sterile and can't reproduce. There's a case, you can get tribrids occasionally, but a lot of times I believe God put boundaries on that.

How much a species can interbreed with the same kind, but different species, just because genetics can start getting messed up.

How much does Owolex weigh? He looks hefty.

Yeah, he's a pretty big bird, but he only weighs five pounds. So God designed this bird for, or birds in general for flight. So they're super lightweight. Feathers are like a foam filled tube, that shaft, and they're really lightweight, they're flexible and strong.

Their bones are hollow and they have struts going through them and it makes them lightweight, but they're still strong. And with their bones, the avian lung system, I'm not trying to go into a ton of detail, but is super complex and it's unique to the animal kingdom.

And they have like air sacs on their lungs. So when they breathe in, it goes through their lung and into the air sacs. And some of those air sacs go in between the muscles, some of them go into the bones.

And so they basically have like a one-way breathing system. Every time they breathe, they're getting fresh air in their lungs.

Well, he looks like he weighs about 15 pounds.

Yeah, my average guess is about 25 when I'm doing classes. He's a pretty big bird. He has about a five foot wingspan and he weighs about five pounds.

And then can you train him to do any kind of tricks? Like, does he have a motivation? Like, is he food motivated or something that you can like find rewards to train him?

Yeah, so you can like train these guys. So you can train them to fly like to and from. And he is food motivated. So with birds of prey, you're training them with food. That's what they want. Owls in particular, they're a little bit stubborn and they're harder to train.

There's the wise old owl saying, owls are one of the stupidest birds of prey I have ever worked with. They're like that dumb jock. You know, they're like perfect for what they do and they do not seem that smart.

I mean, he's maybe smarter than we give him credit for.

What was that?

But compared to like some of the hawks and falcons, he's not as smart. And the parrots are crazy smart.

So he's like the cat of the mammal world.

Yes.

Yes, he is. He is a cat. Like the birds want to please you. Like our green-winged macaw right now is flapping her wings because she wants me to pick her up. She wants to hang out with me. He doesn't care.

He's fine being with me. He is fine not being with me. So yeah, did that answer your question?

Yes, yes it did.

Thank you.

He's so cute.

Yeah.

And so basically with him, for what we're doing, since we teach with kids and we like people to get really close to him, we basically just reinforce him staying on the glove so that he doesn't fly away.

Because sometimes it can get hard if you train a bird to fly and to sit. It takes a lot more upkeep because when you take him out, they'll want to go flying. And so we basically just, we fly him occasionally, we take him out, but typically we just keep him on the glove when he comes out.

You can just put a string on his leg and fly him like a kite?

Basically, yeah. It's called a creance. And so we fly him on a long line. So it's about a hundred feet. And so we'll fly him. And then if he like deviates, you just put a little bit of pressure on it and he'll slowly land.

So, yeah.

That's Alex the Owl. Any last questions before I pass him off?

I think we're good.

Quickly, do these birds drink water normally?

They do drink. They do drink, but he doesn't seem like he drinks as much as some of our other birds. I think they get a lot of their moisture through food, but he does drink. So they'll put their beak in and they'll pull their head up.

So they drink like a bird, but I don't see him. I've only seen him drinking, I think once in three years. So, but he probably drinks at night, but yeah, they don't seem to drink as much as the parrots do.

Okay, thank you very much.

Oh, well, all my stuff just went everywhere. All right. So is there any last questions on the birds before I move on?

Oh, I think we're good.

Yeah, I think we're ready. We're on the edges of our seats.

The Design of the New Caledonian Giant Forest Gecko

So the next species I have for you is one of my favorites. They're really cool. And this is the largest species of gecko in the world. So this is only about a 14 month old. So he'll probably get twice this size.

This is a New Caledonian Giant Forest Gecko. Most people call them Leachianus geckos or a leachie. So they're Raggedactilus leachianus. And so most people refer to them as a leachie. These guys are incredibly designed.

They're from New Caledonia, which is an island off the coast of Australia. And they're just really, really cool animals. These guys get huge for geckos. They get really chunky and there's a bunch of different localities.

So depending on where on the islands or different islands that you find one of these guys, they'll have different patterns and they'll have different head shapes. Some of them will have like a more bulldog, like thick appearance.

Some of them will be longer and skinnier. So there's quite a bit of variation within this particular species. But they're really cool. If they lose their tail, they can grow it back. So if a predator gets after them, they'll drop that tail and they can grow it back.

But the most notable feature of geckos is their feet. Their feet are designed to a T. If you have part of their feet, they don't work. So these guys, where did my little card go? These guys have little ridges on their feet.

I don't know if you can see that card, but those little ridges are called lamellae. And each one of those is a cluster of tiny microscopic hair-like structures called setae. Those hair-like structures are about a thousandth the size of your hair.

And then each one of them has split ends. So those split ends act on molecular forces called van der Waals forces. And there are so many of them that that attraction between molecules adds up and gives them enough to support themselves.