Ask the Animals! with Michael Maughon

Opening Remarks and Creation Fellowship Introduction

And there we go. Okay. All right. Well, I am Terri Camerisell and I'm here on behalf of Creation Fellowship Santee. We're a group of friends who love to study God's Word and believe the Bible when read properly disproves Darwinian evolution.

We've been meeting on this online platform since May of 2020. And since meeting online, we've been blessed with about 90 different individual speakers covering creation science, other theology topics, and even current events.

Our goal is to equip believers to be ready to share their faith. You can find most of our past presentations by visiting tinyurl .com forward slash CFS archives. That's C like creation, F like fellowship, S like Santee, and the word archives.

Tonight, we're excited to welcome back our friend Michael Mahon. Michael is a wildlife educator. After leaving a career as an acrobatic performer in Las Vegas, Michael returned to Tennessee, started an exotic animal rescue, and began working at Doe River Gorge during doing outdoor education.

This animal rescue later turned into what is now Genesis Animal Sanctuary. Prior to starting Genesis, Michael worked at an exotic animal rescue in Florida and a wildlife rescue in North Carolina. Last year in 2023, Michael visited us with some of his live friends in his living room and back.

He's with us again. He's back with us again tonight with some new friends to share. So Michael, we are ready for.

You. All right. Thank you. So we have a PowerPoint plus we're going to have live animals. All right. One second. Let me get my PowerPoint up and then we'll get started.

All right. Can everybody see everything? Michael, let me just quick remind everybody up in your right hand corner is the word view. If you click on view, you'll find side-by-side speaker. Click on that and then you can adjust the size of each one of these by dragging the white vertical line to the left or to the right.

Okay, I'm done.

Awesome. So this talk is called Ask the Animals and we're going to look at some of the incredible design features that God gave these animals. So Ask the Animals comes from a verse in Job, Job 12, 7 through 9.

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'll 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 take time to look at the design of anything in nature, it screams of a creator. It cannot just happen. So this right here is Cracker and Cracker is our green winged macaw. She is an incredible, incredible bird.

If you look at her, she's missing some feathers. She came in from an abuse case. She was being kept in a really tiny cage with another macaw and we got her and she's very happy. But once they start plucking their feathers due to stress, it becomes a habit like biting your fingernails and it's very, very hard for them to stop.

And then her chest, she plucked so much that she damaged the follicles and those feathers will never grow back. But she's a healthy, happy bird now. We have no idea how old she is, but these guys can live to be 100 years old.

They live a very long time and they're very, very intelligent. And one huge feature is this beak. Their beak is incredibly strong. She could snap a broom handle in half. She can chew through a two by four in a few hours.

She could probably break my finger if she wanted to. But God gave him this huge beak to eat seeds. And nuts, they can crack open some of the hardest nuts on the planet with relative ease. If you give her a walnut, she can snap it like it's not even there.

And then she uses her tongue to get out the inside and get what she wants and swallows it. And then right here, one thing that's really cool about having her with no feathers is you can see her crop. So this kind of bulge right here is her crop and it's like a food storage container.

So she eats her food and it goes into that crop and then it'll slowly go into her stomach, which is really, really neat. So these guys in the wild, they are from South America, Central South America, and they fly around the rainforest and they will eat fruit up in the top of the trees that is not ripe.

And that fruit is toxic and it'll kill them. But God programmed these birds to know that if they fly over to these clay banks, they can eat the clay and that clay helps neutralize those toxins and it gives them the ability to eat a lot of this unripe fruit that other animals can't eat.

So it opens up a whole new food source. But it's really hard to learn that behavior because it's hard to learn something when if you don't know it, you die. So it's very, very difficult to learn a behavior that will kill you if you don't know it.

That's something that God programmed these animals to know how to do. So that way they can survive in the wild and they can eat all this fruit and eat that clay and it neutralizes those toxins. It's absolutely incredible.

So these birds are really cool. If you look at her face, let's see if I can get her a little closer to the camera, you can see all those tiny feathers. And that is a fingerprint that God gave them. Each green-winged macaw has that beautiful feather pattern and each one is different.

So you can tell the individual bird by looking at those facial patterns. Really cool. And this is the second largest species of macaw in the world. Very, very fun bird. They're my favorite species of macaw.

She's my best friend. All right, I'm going to set her right up here. But these guys, their feathers are incredible and their feathers are perfectly placed. And one thing that's just absolutely, you can't explain it, is that they molt their feathers.

And so once a year, typically they're going to replace those feathers and they'll get rid of the feather and grow a new feather. And they molt in pattern and they molt in matched pairs. So if they lose one feather, they will lose the exact same feather on the other side within about 48 hours.

And that's to keep them balanced. These are flight feathers. And if they lost a bunch of flight feathers on one wing, they would not be able to fly. So God thought of everything and he designed these animals to molt in matched pairs.

So they will lose feathers within about two days. Really, really cool. Really cool. And so if you map out a bird's wings, they are absolutely symmetrical. And so they'll lose the same feather on each side.

And that's a right and left wing primary feather from a green-winged macaw. And then the diversity of feathers. This is her tail feather. It's probably about two feet long. And then we got this little guy.

Let's see if I can get that in focus. I don't know if y 'all can see that. Oh, I dropped it.

It's gone. Oh, there it is. Is that bad luck? Does that bring you bad luck if you drop a feather?

No. Okay. I don't know. So right there is a tiny feather. So she can have a feather that's two feet long and a feather that's like three millimeters. Incredible design. Those feathers have to be the shape that they are and they have to be in the location that they are for a bird to be a bird.

You cannot evolve a feather from a scale. It is absolutely impossible and it is absurd to think that it happened that way because it can't happen. A feather is so complex. So Darwin said, first, why if species have descended from other species by fine gradation, do we not everywhere see innumerable transition forms?

Why is not all of nature in confusion instead of species being, as we see them, well-defined? The reason that we don't see chaos in nature is because things are well-defined and they are well-designed by the Lord Jesus Christ.

The God of the Bible created everything. In Genesis 1, he says,. And God said, Let the waters team with living creatures, and let the birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky. So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teams and moves about in it according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the waters in the sea and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening and morning the fifth day.

And God said, Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds, the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and all the wild animals, each according to its kind. And it was so.

And God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

So what is a kind of creature? That's one thing we don't see in modern scientific classification. So let's look at where that kind of breaks down. So typically, your biblical kind is going to fall somewhere around the family level.

So it's not going to be down to the species, it's going to be down to the family. So there's a little bit bigger groups. So right here, we have a few different species of parrot. And then the parrots would break down into different kinds.

Would you grab Simon for me? So we have different kinds of parrots. So we have like Cracker right here, she would be part of the macaw kind. And you could break down the parrots, there's like 350 species of parrot, you could break those down into like, potentially as little as three kinds, I would break it down into a little bit more than that.

But here's another different kind of bird. Let's see, we don't use this guy in presentations very much. This right here is Simon, the umbrella cockatoo. Hi, Simon, can you dance and show off for everybody?

Hey, wait, don't go over there. This is why I don't use him because he's crazy. Come on. No, come here. So Simon is he's an awesome bird, but he is a spaz and he likes to jump around. Can you dance? Can you dance with me?

You're making me look like an idiot on camera. Hey, I know. Cockatoos love cuddles. They're super cuddly. But this would be the cockatoo kind. So there's a quite a few different species of cockatoo. And they all have this big, beautiful crest, they all have some kind of crest.

And when you look at a cockatoo, you can tell it's a cockatoo because it has a cockatoo-ness to it. You have your macaw kind, they have very similar features. And most of the time you can look at a macaw.

And you can be like, oh my goodness, that is a macaw. And then within your kinds, your different kinds can typically hybridize. So if you take a blue and gold macaw and a scarlet macaw, you're going to get what is called a Catalina macaw.

It's still a macaw. It just looks a little bit different, takes on some of the traits of both parents. Some other kinds like the equine kind, horses and zebras, donkeys, and you can hybridize those. You can breed a horse and a zebra and get a zorse.

Your cat kind, your dog kind. If I show you a dog that you've never seen before, you can tell that it's a dog because it has a dog-ness to it. And so that's kind of where your created kinds are going to be.

They're very well defined. You can tell what kind of animal it is. Like Simon the cockatoo, come on, dance with me. You're making me look like a fool. What can you do? Sometimes they don't cooperate. But this is Simon.

He doesn't get to be seen by people very much because he likes to bite people's feet. So he jumps on the ground, runs around, and attacks toes. It is the worst, but I love you too. I love you too. All right.

Let me stick this guy up really quick. Thank you, honey. All right. And then in Genesis 126, it says, and God said, let us make mankind in our image and our likeness so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. Mankind was created in the image of God. We are set apart from the animal kingdom. We are created to rule over God's coalition.

And we were created male and female, XX and XY. There are only two options. And continuing in Genesis, then God said, I give you every seed bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.

They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground, everything that has the breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food.

And it was so. And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And it was evening and morning, the sixth day. So we're going to meet our next guest. I will be right back. Oh, you put yourself way back there.

Oh, hello. Cracker says hello to everybody. So this right here is Alex the owl. Alex is a Eurasian eagle owl, and they're generally considered to be the largest species of owl in the world. And he is an absolute incredible creature.

We're going to start at the top of his head and work our way down and look at some of his amazingly designed features. So first, your ear tufts. These right here, they're called ear tufts, and they have nothing to do with hearing.

They are a mood indicator. So when Alex is happy, he'll stand them straight up. When he gets kind of grumpy, he lays them down. So he is he's in an okay mood right now. And then they also aid in camouflage.

So they help break up his shape when he's sitting up in a tree, they kind of add a little bit more shape to his shape. So he's not just a big blob, and it kind of helps in the camouflage. And then one of the most notable things about owls is their eyeballs.

They have huge eyes. If your eyes were the same size as his compared to the size of your head, your eyes would be the size of grapefruits. Really, really big eyes. And they have incredible vision. And he can see text on a newspaper from about across a football field.

So they can see very, very well. Isn't that right, buddy? And their eyes are so big, and they're kind of tube shaped back into their head. So they can't actually look side to side like we can. But God gave them the ability to rotate his head 270 degrees.

He can turn his head three quarters of a turn. It's super, super impressive. He can turn his head backwards and look up. He can look wherever he wants because God designed his neck to be absolutely incredible.

And then so his ears are right below here. They're right there on the side of his head. And his hearing is about 10 times more sensitive than a human. So they also have very, very good hearing. He has this sharp little beak right here.

It looks really small because it's covered up with feathers. And they also have these bristles. They look like hairs, but they're a sensory feather. Because once they get up close to something, they have a really hard time seeing.

And so they use those bristles to kind of feel what they're about to eat. And then that sharp beak they use to tear flesh, and they'll swallow it. And then they can't digest the bones and fur. So they'll compact that and they throw it up what's called an owl pellet.

And so when he eats a rat, he usually swallows them whole. And then he will vomit up and a pellet of the bones and fur before he eats his next meal. So one of my favorite features, my favorite feature, my favorite feature of the owl is their wings.

And owls are the only species of bird in the world that have this. They have a special fringe right here on their primary feathers. Let me see if I can get I'm gonna zoom in just a little bit, see if we can get get on that.

Right there. You can see that fringe just a little bit. And that fringe gives them extremely quiet flight. So when they flap, that fringe breaks up the air turbulence and dampens the sound. Once he gets going, he's completely silent.

So these guys are incredible ambush predators. And they are crepuscular. So these guys like to hunt at dusk and dawn. That's their preferred time to come out. They will hunt during the day they will hunt at night.

But that preferred time is dusk and dawn. And then we'll get down to his legs. So I've had a special request for tonight. Owls have really, really long legs. So let's see. Can y 'all see that? Let's see if I can get a side view.

He has really long legs. And they're really, really powerful. So his legs, his grip strength is about 800 pounds per square inch. An adult German shepherd's bite is about 500 pounds per square inch. And a human's grip strength is only about 100 pounds per square inch.

So these guys are incredibly powerful, incredibly powerful feet. They can take anything from a small rodent to a fox or a small deer. And then he also has about a five foot wingspan. And then another thing, usually, people guess how much he weighs.

And my average guess is probably between 20 and 30 pounds. But God thought of everything. And these guys are built for flight. Birds are built for flight. Alex only weighs five pounds. Extremely, extremely light.

And he has hollow bones. And then his feathers have a rachis. This is one of the parrot's feathers. But this tube right here, the shaft is called the rachis. And it is like a foam filled tube. It's lightweight, flexible and strong.

And then those hollow bones, everything about him is just built to be lightweight and powerful. Really, really incredible bird. Huge fan. Here's a close up of his feet. And then they also have these really, really grippy feet.

So once they grab onto something, it's typically not going to get away. All right, our next animal is named Carly. And Carly is our crested gecko. And crested geckos are really cool. They were thought to be extinct until 1994.

And they were rediscovered on the Isle of Pines in New Caledonia. And she's occasionally kind of jumpy. But this right here is... Let me see if I can get her. Okay, there she is. This right here is a crested gecko.

And you can they're also called an eyelash gecko, because they have these beautiful eyelashes. Really, really incredible animal. So geckos are probably my favorite type of lizard. And this particular species, they love to eat insects.

But a lot of times they eat nectar and fruit depending on the time of year. And they cannot blink. So to clean their eyes, they will lick them. And it's really fun to watch. Super cool. And then she has this beautiful tail, and it's partially prehensile.

And so with that tail, she can grab onto stuff to help her climb in the trees. But when they lose it, it'll fall off if they get attacked by a predator. And if it falls off, it does not grow back. So they just have a little nub.

And it won't grow back, but it doesn't hurt them. God designed them to be able to detach that tail. And when they detach the tail, they can reattach or they can shut off the blood supply. Once they lose it, it doesn't grow back.

But that blood supply shuts off. If you didn't have that mechanism, they would probably bleed to death losing that much of their body. It's a big chunk. Very, very cool. But the reason I love geckos so much is about 60 of geckos have these sticky pads on their feet.

And those pads are called, each one of those little lines is called a lamellae. And they're made up of millions of tiny microscopic hairs that are about a thousandth the size of a thousandth the diameter of a human hair.

And there's millions of them on each one of those little lines. And those little seti hairs go into split ends. And those split ends are called spatula. And they are so tiny that they can kind of combine with molecules.

It's called van der Waals forces. And they attract to the, they're attracted to the surface by very weak atomic attractions. And these forces are like so weak, they could barely keep atoms connected together.

But there's billions of them on the bottom of these guys' feet. Oh, there he goes. And that allows them to stick to just about any surface. This gecko can climb straight up a glass wall. Really, really incredible design on the gecko.

Love these guys. And so here's a picture of kind of what those seti, what those individual hairs look like. They come off and they have these little split ends. But their feet are incredibly designed.

You can't evolve something this complex. Because you have to have everything there from the start or it doesn't work. And their feet, down to like how their feet function, is absolutely necessary. Because these guys, most people's feet bend down like this, these guys roll their toes up.

So when they let go, they roll those toes up. And that's how they get their foot unstuck. And if they didn't have their foot shape and the correct design of the foot, so it can detach those pads one at a time, they would put their foot down, they would get stuck, and they would die because they would not be able to get their foot unstuck.

Very, very, very cool little animal. This is the crested gecko. Right. So our next animal was in a very bad mood earlier when I got him out. So we'll see how this goes. This animal we've been working with for about two years now.

And it took about a year and a half before we could actually pick him up without him trying to get us. So he usually does pretty good. But for some reason, he was slightly moody today. So this right here is Bubbles.

And Bubbles is a Cuvier's dwarf caiman. This is the smallest species of crocodilian in the world. And they are really cool. He's about three years old, and he'll get about five feet long. So he's gonna get pretty big.

Really, really incredible animal. So these guys are designed for an aquatic environment, and they have everything they need to thrive. Let's see if I can focus on his face to thrive in an aquatic environment.

You're going to find these in South America. And so everything they have is set on top of their head. So their ears are right behind their eyes, right on top of their head. Their eyes are set on top of their head.

Their nose is set right there on the top of their snout. And that way, when they're hiding in the water, they can stick their head out of the water just barely, and they can see, smell, and hear. And the rest of them is hidden.

That way, they can sneak up and ambush whatever they're trying to catch. And then they also have valves. So if you look in the back of his throat, he has a palatal valve, and he shuts that off. So that way, when he's catching fish underwater, he doesn't swallow a bunch of water.

He also can shut off his ears and his nose. They both have flaps that they can close. So when they go underwater, they can catch fish, and they're not going to swallow a bunch of water. Really, really awesome.

They also have a nicotating membrane. So it's like a third eyelid that they can shut. And that nicotating membrane acts like goggles. So when they go underwater, they can shut that, or yeah, shut the third eyelid, that nicotating membrane.

And it's like built-in goggles for them. Really cool. They have this big old paddle-like tail. It's very flat, and it propels them through the water. And then this species is the only species that doesn't have webbed feet.

So these guys are slightly more terrestrial than most other species. They like to go up on land and hunt for crustaceans. There we go. We can see it right there. These guys do not have the webbed feet.

And then another thing is they have a lot of osteoburms. In their back, right there, all those little scales are called scutes. And they have bones under them, which is like built-in armor. So each one of those scales is very hard because they have osteoderms.

But that also protects them from poachers, because this particular species has so many osteoderms that their hide is basically impossible to tan. So they just leave them alone because there is not a lot they can do with it.

Very, very, very cool animal right here. They also can replace their teeth. So when they lose their teeth, they can replace each tooth about 50 times in its lifespan. Super cool. There's a kind of close-up photo of the osteoderms.

But I love looking at God's design. I never understood how absolutely incredible crocodilians were until I started working with this guy. And they're just phenomenally designed. You feel them, and they're so strong.

They're so quick. They have insane teeth. Look at those crazy teeth. Hold on. Sorry if my face is on there. I had a hard time focusing on his face. Look at that. Oh, beautiful, beautiful animal. Beautiful animal.

All right. We're going to meet a really cool guy named Tamale. And these guys are really, really cool. This is a blue-tongued skink. And this is a northern blue-tongued skink from Australia. And they get their name blue-tongued skink because they have that bright blue tongue.

Y 'all see that? So why do they have a blue tongue? Because they eat blueberries? No. These guys have a really heavy body and really tiny legs. You can see that right there. He has a thick old body. And look how tiny those little legs are.

They're not super quick. So these guys are going to have a hard time escaping from a predator. They like to burrow underground. But if they're caught out in the open, there's not a lot they can do. They can't climb very well.

And they're really slow because they drag their belly on the ground. But God gave them that bright blue tongue. And so these guys mimic animals in nature that are brightly colored and are poisonous or venomous.

And these guys are neither. But if a predator gets after them, they'll stick out that bright blue tongue, open their mouth, and they'll try to scare away the predator. And predators will see that and be like, oh, I don't want to eat that.

I might get sick. Or it might be venomous. So God gave them that. And they know how to use it. These, when they have babies, they have live young. And they can have like up to 30 babies. And their babies just leave.

So they don't hang out with mom. Mom doesn't teach them to stick out their tongue at a predator. If it comes, it had to know how to do that. God programmed these animals to know that they need to stick that tongue out at a predator.

Because the first time they don't do that, and they get caught in the open, there's a good chance they're going to get eaten. So that is a behavior that has to be inherited, it has to be taught, they have to know how to do it.

Really, really beautiful. I'm going to zoom in on his face one more time. So we can look at that bright blue tongue. And so you'll see him sticking out his tongue. These guys have a Jacobson's organ. So in the top of their mouth, they have two little holes.

And he's tasting the air. And we'll talk about that a little bit more when we get out the snakes. But this is tamale, the blue tongue skink. And if you look right there on the side of his head, that is his ear hole.

So lizards have external ear openings, snakes do not. Really, really cool. All right. There's a picture of his blue tongue. And now this is probably in my opinion, the most beautiful species of non venomous snake.

This is Noah. And he is a Brazilian rainbow boa. So we're going to pull this guy out. And look, look how incredible the snake is. He's about six feet long. And when you get them in good light, they're iridescent.

So that's where they get that rainbow boa name. They have a beautiful iridescence. They look like an oil spill when they're in daylight. And these guys are awesome climbers. They're super strong. And they're found in Brazil.

And these guys usually come out at night, they climb up into the trees to hunt. And during the day, they're going to go and they're going to hide underground. So these guys like it really humid and they like it pretty hot.

So they're a little bit of a harder species to keep, because they like really, really specific temperatures and humidity. Let's see if I can get a close up of that guy. They're beautiful, beautiful. They have these rings on top.

And on the sides, they have those beautiful leopard spots. Really, really amazing animal. And then these guys have live young. So a lot of snakes, lay eggs. These guys are ovoviviparous. So they have eggs inside and then they hatch and they give birth to live young, just like the blue tongue skink.

I love rainbow boas. And if you look at him, he's flicking his tongue. And as he's flicking that tongue, he's tasting the air. And so they have two little like holes in the top of their mouth. And they get collect scent molecules.

They stick the two forks of their tongue up into those two holes. And that kind of sends whatever they collected on their tongue to their brain. And that's how they find their food. Really cool. And then when these guys eat, this is a constrictor.

So he's going to bite onto his prey, and he's going to wrap it up and throw some coils around it, he's going to squeeze it really, really tight, suffocate it, and then they're going to swallow it whole.

And typically, they're going to let go of it and find the head. And they'll swallow it head first. And that way, the fur and the arms and everything lay down and it makes it easier for him to swallow.

But this guy can swallow something five times the size of his head. So typically, I look at the middle of his body. And middle of his body is about that big. And then I that's about how thick the rats are that I feed them.

And he can swallow it down that tiny little neck and head. Really cool. And the way they do that is God gave them ligaments. So he has a ligament in the back of his jaw right here. So his jaw can separate.

So when it opens up, he can open his mouth almost 180 degrees. And then it can also open up in the back. And then there's a ligament connecting the jaw in the front. And so it can come apart and they can move their jaws independently.

So once they grab on, they suffocate their prey. And then they use those jaws and they work that food back into their body and they swallow it whole. Really, really good design. Very, very cool. All right, we're gonna move on and meet our next critter.

So here's a picture of him climbing. And then right here, you can see his scales. And you can see some of that iridescent pattern on him. And for people that are in the zoom call, we are going to have a Q &A at the end.

So you will have a chance to ask some questions and we can talk about some of these animals and it's going to be really fun. So our next animal, and then right here, you can kind of see it on this slide.

You can see these, there's almost like a clear part over the scale. And that's what refracts the light and gives them that beautiful iridescence. Could you grab me our next guest? Yep. So our next guy, he's new.

This is his first time doing anything with us. His name is Pinto. And he is our sulcata tortoise or African spurred tortoise, or an African spur-thigh tortoise. And the reason they're called a spurred tortoise is on their back legs, they have these like huge, like elongated scales with these huge spurs on the back legs.

And they're really impressive. These guys are really cool. They're found in Northern Africa along the southern edge of the Saharan desert. Oh my goodness. Okay, let me grab this guy. He is our heaviest animal that we're using tonight.

He weighs about 50 pounds. So this is a big old tortoise. And he is about 16 years old. And these guys, the males can get over 200 pounds. So they can get really big. They can get about 30 inches in diameter, and over 200 pounds.

Really, really big animal. They are the largest mainland tortoise in the world. All the other bigger tortoises, the Galapagos and the Aldabra are found on islands. So they are the third largest species of tortoise in the world, but they are the largest mainland species.

Super incredible. These guys like to eat grasses, green plants, cactus. And then in the summer, these guys, to get out of the heat, they will go into estivation. So it's like hibernation, but when it's really hot in the dry season.

And so they can dig burrows that are like over 10 feet deep and huge. I've worked with some of these guys that are, were well over 100 pounds, and they dug holes so big that I could crawl down in them on my hands and knees.

They're really, really good burrowers. And so if you look at his front legs, he has these big old scales. We're going to try to zoom in on them a little bit. And those scales, when he tucks his head back into a shell, he pulls those in front and it closes off the front of a shell and gives him really, really good armored protection.