Ask the Animals! with Michael Maughon

Creation Fellowship

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And there we go. Okay. All right. Well, I am Terri Camerisell, and I'm here on behalf of Creation Fellowship Santee.

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We're a group of friends who love to study God's word and believe the Bible when read properly disproves

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Darwinian evolution. We've been meeting on this online platform since May of 2020.

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And since meeting online, we've been blessed with about 90 different individual speakers covering creation science, other theology topics, and even current events.

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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

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forward slash CFS archives. That's C like creation, F like fellowship,

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S like Santee and the word archives. Tonight we're excited to welcome back our friend

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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.

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This animal rescue later turned into what is now Genesis Animal Sanctuary. Prior to starting

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Genesis, Michael worked at an exotic animal rescue in Florida and a wildlife rescue in North Carolina.

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Last year in 2023, Michael visited us with some of his live friends in his living room and back.

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He's with us again. He's back with us again tonight with some new friends to share.

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So Michael, we are ready for you. All right, thank you.

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So we have a PowerPoint plus we're going to have live animals. All right, one second, let me get my

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PowerPoint up and then we'll get started. All right.

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Can everybody see everything? Michael, let me just quick remind everybody up in your right hand corner is the word view.

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If you click on view, you'll find side by side speaker, click on that.

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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.

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Okay, I'm done. Awesome. So this talk is called Ask the

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Animals and we're going to look at some of the incredible design features that God gave these animals.

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So ask the animals comes from a verse in Job, 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'll teach you or let the fish in the sea inform you.

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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.

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It cannot just happen. So this right here is Cracker and Cracker is our green winged macaw.

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She is an incredible, incredible bird. If you look at her, she's missing some feathers. She came in from an abuse case.

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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.

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And then her chest, she plucked so much that she damaged the follicles and those feathers will never grow back.

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But she's a healthy, happy bird now. We have no idea how old she is, but these guys can live to be a hundred years old.

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They live a very long time and they're very, very intelligent. And one huge feature is this beak.

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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.

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She could probably break my finger if she wanted to. But God gave him this huge beak to eat seeds and nuts.

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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.

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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.

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So this kind of bulge right here is her crop and it's like a food storage container.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Each green wing macaw has that beautiful feather pattern and each one is different.

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So you can tell the individual bird by looking at those facial patterns. Really cool.

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And this is the second largest species of macaw in the world. Very, very fun bird.

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They're my favorite species of macaw. She's my best friend. All right, I'm going to set her right up here.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So God thought of everything and he designed these animals to molt in matched pairs.

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So they will lose feathers within about two days.

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Really, really cool. Really cool. And so if you map out a bird's wings, they are absolutely symmetrical.

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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.

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And then the diversity of feathers. This is her tail feather. It's probably about two feet long.

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And then we got this little guy. Let's see if I can get that in focus.

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I don't know if y 'all can see that. Oh, I dropped it. It's gone.

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Oh, there it is. Is that bad luck? Does that bring you bad luck if you drop a feather? I don't know.

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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.

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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.

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You cannot evolve a feather from a scale. It is absolutely impossible.

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And it is absurd to think that it happened that way because it can't happen.

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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?

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Why is not all of nature in confusion instead of species being as we see them well defined?

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The reason that we don't see chaos in nature is because things are well defined and they are well designed by the

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Lord Jesus Christ. The God of the Bible created everything. In Genesis 1, he says,

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And God said, let the waters team with living creatures and let the birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.

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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.

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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.

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Fill the waters in the sea and let the birds increase on the earth. And there was evening and morning, the fifth day.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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So right here, we have a few different species of parrot. And then the parrots would break down into different kinds.

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Would you grab Simon for me? So we have different kinds of parrots. So we have like Cracker right here.

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She would be part of the macaw kind. And you could break down the parrots.

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There's like 350 species of parrot. You could break those down into like potentially as little as three kinds.

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I would break it down into a little bit more than that. But here's another different kind of bird.

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Let's see. We don't use this guy in presentations very much. This right here is Simon, the umbrella cockatoo.

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Hi, Simon. Can you dance and show off for everybody? Hey, wait, don't go over there. This is why

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I don't use him because he's crazy. Come on. No, come here.

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So Simon, he's an awesome bird, but he is a spaz and he likes to jump around.

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Can you dance? Can you dance with me? You're making me look like an idiot on camera. Hey, I know.

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Cockatoos love cuddles. They're super cuddly. But this would be the cockatoo kind. So there's quite a few different species of cockatoo.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Catalina macaw. It's still a macaw. It just looks a little bit different. Takes on some of the traits of both parents.

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Some other kinds, like the equine kind, horses and zebras, donkeys.

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And you can hybridize those. You can breed a horse and a zebra and get a zorse. Your cat kind, your dog kind.

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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.

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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.

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Like Simon, the cockatoo. Come on, dance with me. You're making me look like a fool.

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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.

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So he jumps on the ground, runs around, and attacks toes. It is the worst.

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But I love you, too. I love you, too. All right. Let me stick this guy up really quick.

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All right. And then in Genesis 1 26, it says,

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And God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in 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.

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So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them.

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Mankind was created in the image of God. We are set apart from the animal kingdom. We are created to rule over God's creation.

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And we were created male and female. XX and XY. There are only two options.

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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.

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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,

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I give every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw all that he had made.

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And it was very good. And it was evening and morning the sixth day. So we're going to meet our next guest.

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I will be right back. Oh, you put yourself way back there.

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Hello. Cracker said hello to everybody.

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So this right here is Alex the owl. Alex is a

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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.

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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.

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So first, your ear tufts. These right here, they're called ear tufts.

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And they have nothing to do with hearing. They are a mood indicator. So when

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Alex is happy, he'll stand them straight up. When he gets kind of grumpy, he lays them down.

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So he is he's in an OK 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.

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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.

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And then one of the most notable things about owls is their eyeballs. They have huge eyes.

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If your eyes were the same size as his compared to the size of your head, your eyes would be the size of grapefruits.

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Really, really big eyes. And they have incredible vision. And he can see text on a newspaper from about across a football field.

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So they can see very, very well. Isn't that right, buddy? And their eyes are so big.

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And they're kind of tube shaped back into their head. So they can't actually look side to side like we can.

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But God gave them the ability to rotate his head 270 degrees. He can turn his head three quarters of a turn.

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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.

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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.

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So they also have very, very good hearing. He has this sharp little beak right here.

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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.

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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.

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And then that sharp beak they use to tear flesh. And they'll swallow it.

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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.

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And so when he eats a rat, he usually swallows them whole. And then he will vomit up a pellet of the bones and fur before he eats his next meal.

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So one of my favorite features, my favorite feature, my favorite feature of the owl is their wings.

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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.

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Let me see if I can get, I'm going to zoom in just a little bit, see if we can get on that.

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Right there. You can see that fringe just a little bit. And that fringe gives them extremely quiet flight.

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So when they flap, that fringe breaks up the air turbulence and dampens the sound. Once he gets going, he is completely silent.

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So these guys are incredible ambush predators. And they are crepuscular. So these guys like to hunt at dusk and dawn.

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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.

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And then we'll get down to his legs. So I've had a special request for tonight.

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Owls have really, really long legs. So let's see. Can you all see that?

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Let's see if I can get a side view. He has really long legs. And they're really, really powerful.

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So his legs, his grip strength is about 800 pounds per square inch. An adult

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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.

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So these guys are incredibly powerful. Incredibly powerful feet.

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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.

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And then another thing. Usually, people guess how much he weighs.

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And my average guess is probably between 20 and 30 pounds. But God thought of everything.

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And these guys are built for flight. Birds are built for flight. Alex only weighs five pounds.

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Extremely, extremely light. And he has hollow bones. And then his feathers have a rachis.

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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.

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It's lightweight, flexible, and strong. And then those hollow bones, everything about him is just built to be lightweight and powerful.

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Really, really incredible bird. Huge fan. Here's a close -up of his feet.

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And then they also have these really, really grippy feet. So once they grab onto something, it's typically not going to get away.

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All right. Our next animal is named Carly. And Carly is our crested gecko.

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And crested geckos are really cool. They were thought to be extinct until 1994. And they were rediscovered on the

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Isle of Pines in New Caledonia. And she's occasionally kind of jumpy.

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But this right here is... Let me see if I can get her.

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Okay, there she is. This right here is a crested gecko.

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And you can see those. They're also called an eyelash gecko. Because they have these beautiful eyelashes.

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Really, really incredible animal. So geckos are probably my favorite type of lizard.

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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.

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And they cannot blink. So to clean their eyes, they will lick them.

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And it's really fun to watch. Super cool. And then she has this beautiful tail.

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And it's partially prehensile. And so with that tail, she can grab onto stuff to help her climb in the trees.

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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.

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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.

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And when they detach the tail, they can reattach... Or they can shut off the blood supply.

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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.

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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.

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And those pads are called... Each one of those little lines is called a lamellae.

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And they're made up of millions of tiny microscopic hairs that are about a thousandth the diameter of a human hair.

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And there's millions of them on each one of those little lines. And those little seti hairs go into split ends.

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And those split ends are called spatula. And they are so tiny that they can kind of combine with molecules.

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It's called van der Waals forces. And they're attracted to the surface by very weak atomic attractions.

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And these forces are so weak, they could barely keep atoms connected together. But there's billions of them on the bottom of these guys' feet.

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Oh, there he goes. And that allows them to stick to just about any surface.

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This gecko can climb straight up a glass wall. Really, really incredible design on the gecko.

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Love these guys. And so here's a picture of kind of what those seti, what those individual hairs look like.

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They come off and they have these little split ends. But their feet are incredibly designed. You can't evolve something this complex.

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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.

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Because these guys, most people's feet bend down like this. These guys roll their toes up.

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So when they let go, they roll those toes up. And that's how they get their foot unstuck.

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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.

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They would get stuck and they would die. Because they would not be able to get their foot unstuck.

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Very, very, very cool little animal. This is the crested gecko.

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All right. So our next animal was in a very bad mood earlier when

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I got him out. So we'll see how this goes. This animal we've been working with for about two years now.

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And it took about a year and a half before we could actually pick him up without him trying to get us.

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So he usually does pretty good. But for some reason, he was slightly moody today.

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So this right here is Bubbles. And Bubbles is a Cuvier's dwarf caiman.

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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.

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So he's gonna get pretty big. Really, really incredible animal.

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So these guys are designed for an aquatic environment. And they have everything they need to thrive.

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Let's see if I can get him focused on his face like that. To thrive in an aquatic environment.

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You're gonna find these in South America. And so everything they have is set on top of their head.

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So their ears are right behind their eyes, right on top of their head. Their eyes are set on top of their head.

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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.

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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.

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And then they also have valves. So if you look in the back of his throat, he has a palatal valve.

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And he shuts that off. So that way, when he's catching fish underwater, he doesn't swallow a bunch of water.

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He also can shut off his ears and his nose. They both have flaps that they can close.

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So when they go underwater, they can catch fish.

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And they're not gonna swallow a bunch of water. Really, really awesome. They also have a nicotating membrane.

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So it's like a third eyelid that they can shut. And that nicotating membrane acts like goggles.

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So when they go underwater, they can shut that or, yeah, shut the third eyelid, that nicotating membrane.

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And it's like built -in goggles for them. Really cool. They have this big old paddle -like tail.

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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.

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So these guys are slightly more terrestrial than most other species. They like to go up on land and hunt for crustaceans.

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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 osteogerms.

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So in their back, right there, all those little scales are called scutes.

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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.

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But that also protects them from poachers because this particular species has so many osteoderms that their hide is basically impossible to tan.

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So they just leave them alone because there is not a lot they can do with it. Very, very, very cool animal right here.

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They also can replace their teeth. So when they lose their teeth, they can replace each tooth about 50 times in its lifespan.

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Super cool. There's a kind of close -up photo of the osteoderms. But I love looking at God's design.

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I never understood how absolutely incredible crocodilians were until I started working with this guy.

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And they're just phenomenally designed. You feel them and they're so strong. They're so quick.

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They have insane teeth. Look at those crazy teeth. Hold on.

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Sorry if my face is on there. I have a hard time focusing on his face. Look at that. Beautiful, beautiful animal.

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Beautiful animal. All right. We're gonna meet a really cool guy named

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Tamale. And these guys are really, really cool.

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This is a blue -tongued skink. And this is a northern blue -tongued skink from Australia.

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And they get their name blue -tongued skink because they have that bright blue tongue.

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Y 'all see that? So why do they have a blue tongue? Because they eat blueberries?

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No. These guys have a really heavy body and really tiny legs. You can see that right there.

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He has a thick old body. And look how tiny those little legs are. They're not super quick.

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So these guys are gonna have a hard time escaping from a predator. They like to burrow underground.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Look at that. All right, there we go. And so you'll see him sticking out his tongue.

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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.

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And we'll talk about that a little bit more when we get out the snakes. But this is

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Tamale, the blue -tongued skink. And if you look right there on the side of his head, that is his ear hole.

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So lizards have external ear openings. Snakes do not. Really, really cool.

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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.

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This is Noah. And he is a Brazilian rainbow boa.

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So we're going to pull this guy out. And look, look how incredible this snake is.

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He's about six feet long. And when you get them in good light, they're iridescent.

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So that's where they get that rainbow boa name. They have a beautiful iridescence.

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They look like an oil spill when they're in daylight. And these guys are awesome climbers.

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They're super strong. And they're found in Brazil. Ah! And these guys usually come out at night.

33:46

They climb up into the trees to hunt. And during the day, they're going to go and they're going to hide underground.

33:53

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.

34:06

Let's see if I can get a close -up of that guy. They're beautiful, beautiful.

34:13

They have these rings on top. And on the sides, they have those beautiful leopard spots. Really, really amazing animal.

34:22

And then these guys have live young. So a lot of snakes lay eggs. These guys are ovoviviparous.

34:30

So they have eggs inside and then they hatch and they give birth to live young, just like the blue -tongued skink.

34:37

I love rainbow boas. And if you look at him, he's flicking his tongue.

34:43

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.

34:50

And they collect scent molecules. They stick the two forks of their tongue up into those two holes.

34:56

And that kind of sends whatever they collected on their tongue to their brain. And that's how they find their food.

35:03

Really cool. And then when these guys eat, this is a constrictor. So he's going to bite onto his prey.

35:08

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.

35:14

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.

35:21

And that way, the fur and the arms and everything lay down. And it makes it easier for him to swallow.

35:26

But this guy can swallow something five times the size of his head. So typically, I look at the middle of his body.

35:34

And middle of his body is about that big. And then that's about how thick the rats are that I feed them.

35:41

And he can swallow it down that tiny little neck and head. Really cool.

35:47

And the way they do that is God gave them ligaments. So he has a ligament in the back of his jaw right here.

35:52

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.

36:00

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.

36:07

So once they grab on, they suffocate their prey. And then they use those jaws. And they work that food back into their body.

36:15

And they swallow it whole. Really, really good design. Very, very cool.

36:23

All right. We're going to move on and meet our next critter. So here's a picture of him climbing.

36:29

And then right here, you can see his scales. And you can see some of that iridescent pattern on him.

36:39

And for people that are in the Zoom call, we are going to have a Q &A at the end.

36:44

So you will have a chance to ask some questions. And we can talk about some of these animals.

36:49

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.

36:57

You can see these. There's almost like a clear part over the scale.

37:03

And that's what refracts the light and gives them that beautiful iridescence. Could you grab me our next guest?

37:11

So our next guy, he's new. This is his first time doing anything with us.

37:17

His name is Pinto. And he is our sulcata tortoise or African spurred tortoise or an

37:26

African spur -thigh tortoise. And the reason they're called a spurred tortoise is on their back legs.

37:31

They have these like huge, like elongated scales with these huge spurs on the back legs.

37:37

And they're really impressive. But these guys are really cool. They're found in northern

37:44

Africa along the southern edge of the Saharan Desert. Oh my goodness.

37:49

Okay, let me grab this guy. He is our heaviest animal that we're using tonight.

37:59

He weighs about 50 pounds. So this is a big old tortoise.

38:04

And he is about 16 years old. And these guys, the males can get over 200 pounds.

38:11

They can get really big. They can get about 30 inches in diameter and over 200 pounds.

38:16

Really, really big animal. They are the largest mainland tortoise in the world.

38:23

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.

38:30

But they are the largest mainland species. Super incredible. These guys like to eat grasses, green plants, cactus.

38:39

And then in the summer, these guys, to get out of the heat, they will go into estivation.

38:46

So it's like hibernation. But when it's really hot and in the dry season. And so they can dig burrows that are like over 10 feet deep and huge.

38:55

I've worked with some of these guys that were well over 100 pounds. And they dug holes so big that I could crawl down in them on my hands and knees.

39:04

They're really, really good burrowers. And so if you look at his front legs, he has these big old scales.

39:12

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.

39:26

And then they also aid in digging. So when they're digging, they'll use those to dig along with their big old nails.

39:34

Super cool. These guys have a shell. And that's one really, really cool thing about turtles and tortoises.

39:42

Their shell is super, super incredible. And it's something you can't really evolve.

39:49

Because these are the only animals that have their pelvic and pectoral girdles inside their rib cage.

39:57

So their shell is like a modified rib cage. And if you tried to evolve that, one, getting the stuff inside the rib cage would be impossible.

40:08

But then once you fused all your ribs together, we use our ribs and animals use their ribs to help them breathe.

40:16

So when you constrict that, the animal is not going to make it. So it has to have special muscles in place to be able to breathe.

40:25

And that's something you have to have forethought on, which evolution doesn't have. Evolution does not have an explanation why we even have tortoises and turtles, because they can't evolve.

40:36

And they can't even come up with a way that they can evolve because they are so specialized. And they have to have everything they have from the very beginning.

40:47

God created the animals after their kind. And when you look at them and you pay attention to the details, there is no way this evolved.

40:57

It is a perfectly designed animal. Just down to the very, very scales on their legs that protect them and their giant toes for digging, getting down into the ground where it's cool so they can stay cool when it's like 120 outside in the desert.

41:16

Just an amazing, amazing animal. All right, we're going to meet our next guest.

41:24

And he's a pretty, pretty cool one. Yeah, I'm going to take this guy and put him back out into his spot.

41:33

You got him? All right. So our next guest is named

41:44

Alfredo. And Alfredo is a ball python.

41:53

And this is the smallest species of python in the world. They're found in Africa. And if you look closely, you can see he doesn't look normal.

42:02

Half of this animal is white. And this animal is pied. So he has a genetic mutation called pied or piebald.

42:12

And it deletes part of their color. If he was albino, albinism affects the entire animal.

42:19

And it takes away just the melanin. And these guys have carotenoids in their scale, which are yellow.

42:26

And so when you see one of these that's albino, it will be white and yellow. And it'll still kind of have a pattern.

42:32

In the wild, they should look more like this on the entire animal.

42:37

But you do find these guys pied in the wild, although it is rare.

42:44

Really, really cool species. They get maximum, they're going to get about six feet long.

42:50

But usually they're going to be closer to five. They have heat sensing pits.

42:57

So along with smelling, they're pretty nearsighted. So they can't see super well. They're going to sniff for their food.

43:05

They're going to flick that tongue. And try to get sense, pick up sense with that tongue.

43:13

And then they have these on their upper lip. They have these pits.

43:21

It's kind of hard to see on the camera. But they have these pits on that upper lip. And they can see an infrared.

43:26

So they can see body heat. So when they're hunting at night, they can hunt little rodents off their heat signature that they produce.

43:36

And then these guys are also a constrictor. So they're going to grab their food, wrap around it, squeeze it nice and tight.

43:44

And then swallow it whole. One really cool thing about these guys is they are egg layers.

43:53

They lay eggs. And they like to egg brood. So they'll sit on top of their eggs and protect their eggs and kind of help regulate their temperature.

44:01

But these guys, a reptile's egg cannot move. Once it's laid, it has to stay in place.

44:08

If you rotate it, the egg drowns and dies. So if you put a snake on a bunch of chicken eggs, they would all be dead.

44:15

Because the snake moves once. And all those eggs are going to turn a little bit. And they're going to drown and die. Birds will rotate their eggs.

44:21

These guys don't. But God knew that. So he gave them, when they lay their eggs, they cement together.

44:28

So they stick together in a big pile. And then that way, when they lay, they have a huge clump of eggs that are stuck together so they can sit on top of them and protect them.

44:39

And they don't move. If that wasn't there from the very beginning, we wouldn't have pythons.

44:46

Because they would kill their young. So that right there, just their eggs sticking together, is something that is absolutely necessary for us to have these animals.

44:58

God thought of everything. His design is perfect and absolutely incredible. It's so fun.

45:04

I love looking at all the crazy tiny details that God put into his creation.

45:13

I mean, it's mind -blowing when you start looking at some of this stuff. Something as simple as eggs sticking together.

45:21

That tiny little thing is something that would wipe this species off the planet if it wasn't there from the very beginning.

45:32

So we're gonna hop back over to Genesis 1 .29. And then God said,

45:37

I give you every seed -bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.

45:43

They will be yours for food. So originally, all of this creation, we just talked about a lot of predators.

45:50

Originally, this was all vegetarian. They did not eat meat. These guys are strictly carnivores.

45:56

So why is that? God said that I give you every seed -bearing plant on the face of the whole earth.

46:03

So these guys were created to be vegetarian. Why do we have all this death and suffering in the world now?

46:09

We hop over to Genesis 2 .16 and 17. And the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

46:21

For when you eat of it, you will certainly die. So God said, if you disobey me, if you eat this fruit, you will die.

46:30

And Genesis 3, it tells us, when the woman saw the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

46:42

She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. And then the eyes of the both of them were open and they realized they were naked.

46:50

So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. God originally created a perfect world and he created us to rule over it.

46:59

And he gave us a choice. We can choose him or we can choose to disobey him.

47:05

And we chose to disobey him. And he said, when you do that, you will certainly die.

47:11

And that's when death and suffering entered the world. Romans 6 .23 tells us, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our

47:21

Lord. And in Romans 5 .19, it says, for justice through the disobedience of one man, talking about Adam, many were made sinners.

47:31

So also through the obedience of one man, many will be made righteous. Talking about Jesus Christ, the wages of sin is death.

47:39

And so that's the only punishment. That's the only debt to be paid.

47:45

When you are a sinner, which we are all born sinners, death is the punishment for that. But God came and lived a perfect life and took that for us.

47:55

He sacrificed himself as the perfect sacrifice so that we could have a restored relationship with him.

48:02

John 3 .16 says, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

48:11

And then Romans 10 .19 says, if you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

48:19

This is great news. There is so much sin and death in the world. And a lot of people are like, how can

48:26

God be good? How can you believe in a good God with all this death and suffering in the world?

48:32

How can he be good? The reason he's a good God and there's all this death and suffering is because when you track back where sin came from, you don't track it back to God, you track it back to man.

48:43

He said, if you disobey me, you will certainly die. It doesn't go back to him.

48:49

It goes back to us and our choice to disobey what he said. And yet he still came after us and sent his son to die on a cross for our sins.

49:00

That is incredible news. And I'll leave you with this. Matthew 10 .29

49:07

-31 says, are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your father's care.

49:16

Even the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.

49:22

He didn't say that he knows how many hairs are on your head. He said they're all numbered. That means he knows which ones fall out.

49:30

That is a God that cares and a God of detail. And the God of the Bible is the

49:35

God who created everything. He is an absolutely powerful

49:42

God that loves you. And it's so cool when you can look at his creation and just give him glory for what he's made and what he's done.

49:50

And that is it for me. We have a few things I'm going to talk about just as far as stuff.

49:56

Our website is genesisanimalsanctuary .org, if you all want to check that out. And then

50:02

I work at Derver Gorge Ministries and we run all kinds of different programs.

50:07

We have summer camps. We do retreats, outdoor ed, special events. And then I am our gap year director.

50:14

So I run a nine -month discipleship program for high school graduates. And that goes from like September to May.

50:23

It's a really cool program. It's like a Bible school and helps 18 to 25 and helps get kids grounded in their faith before they go off to college.

50:34

It's a really, really cool program. And then we are installing a Christmas train.

50:39

So right now we are destroying the camp and tearing up everything and putting in two more miles of railroad.

50:46

And it's called the Christmas train. And it tells the true story of Christmas from creation to resurrection.

50:54

It's going to be an awesome event. Being able to go on a 20 -minute train ride and just see these lifestyle storybook storyboards going all the way through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

51:10

And then now we're going to go ahead and open it up if y 'all are ready for our Q &A. We are ready.

51:19

And if you don't mind, I think I'll go ahead and stop your sharing so that people can see you, especially if you have to take any more animals out in order to answer questions.

51:35

But we do have quite a few questions. That was really great. And I appreciate you letting us see the owl's legs.

51:46

So first question, the two birds that you had at the beginning, the macaw and the cockatoo, can macaws and cockatoos mate?

51:58

They cannot. So they would be considered, they're different kinds of birds. They're in different, they would be a different kind.

52:05

So they cannot mate. But your different macaws can. Okay. I think you said that Owlix's grip strength, you threw out a few different animals that he could grip.

52:19

So did you say a small deer? Yeah. So these guys could take anything.

52:26

The owl can take anything from like a small rodent to a fox or a small deer. Really, really powerful.

52:33

A small deer? Yes. And swallow it whole? They wouldn't swallow it whole.

52:38

So if they can't, they prefer to swallow stuff whole. But if they can't, they'll tear it up into little shreds and eat it.

52:45

So my next question of all of the animals you showed us, which would be the top of the list of predators?

52:53

Like when you have to separate your animals, they're like, they go off screen and we're not sure what's going on.

52:59

But which is the one that you're most concerned would eat the other ones? So as far as like wood, our owl is very well fed.

53:12

So he probably would not mess with anything just because he doesn't need to.

53:18

But he is the apex predator. He's the top of the food chain. So out of everything we keep, he's top dog.

53:27

That's interesting. And then about his grip strength. His grip strength is like 800 pounds per square inch, which is 8 to 10 times the average human's grip strength.

53:40

So if he did decide to get a hold of one of the animals, you couldn't stop him? I could not stop him, no.

53:47

We've had him grab on. We've had smaller owls than him like grab onto our gloves.

53:53

It bruised my wife's hand through three layers of cowhide glove. Yeah. And you can't get them off until they let go.

54:02

But he's a very sweet bird. So what do you feed him to keep him from turning on you, guy?

54:10

So I don't think he would turn on me. But his main diet is rats and quail. And we buy them frozen and thaw them out and feed them.

54:20

Okay. And he was hand raised. So he's been with us since he was three weeks old. He's an imprint.

54:25

So he basically thinks he's a human. Oh, that's kind of sweet. Okay. Jess would like to know, why does

54:35

Simon lift his head feathers up and down? Does it determine his mood?

54:41

Yes, it does. So with him, when he gets excited, he picks those head feathers up.

54:48

And a lot of times if you go and you're like, oh, yeah, he'll start dancing with you. And they have like so much personality.

54:55

And but he, like I said, likes to bite people's toes. So we don't use them in public presentations because he will fly and like dive bomb people.

55:07

Okay. Let me see.

55:14

I have quite a few questions here. Next one. Noah, Noah the boa.

55:21

He's so shiny. So how, how, like, does that cause a danger for him with his predators that it makes him more obvious to them?

55:33

It doesn't. So he is very, very shiny. But these guys are nocturnal. So they're going to come out at night.

55:39

And they're going to hide underground during the day. So that shininess doesn't really affect them.

55:45

And they're also in the rainforest. So there's not a whole lot of light getting to them in the first place, even if they were out during the day.

55:51

And when you put them on the ground, he's pretty camouflaged. That shininess does not, does not make him stand out as much as you would think.

56:00

Okay. And Noah's female counterpart, how many live bursts would she have in her life?

56:10

In her life? I'm not sure. I don't know clutch size of the rainbow boa.

56:15

I'm sorry. I can't. I don't know how to answer that one. I'll look it up. Yeah, do y 'all have another question?

56:28

Yeah. The next question is what is the difference between a boa and a python? That is a great question.

56:34

One of the huge differences is pythons are oviparous, meaning they lay eggs.

56:40

And boas are ovoviviparous. They have live young. Oh, okay.

56:45

Is that really the only difference or just the biggest difference?

56:52

It's one of the bigger differences. Their body shapes are different. Like I feel like boas are more square and like blocky than a python.

57:02

And your boa is like an anaconda is the heaviest. So they're a lot heavier bodied typically.

57:10

They have really, really heavy bodied snakes. And then your pythons, you have like your reticulated python that are bigger than your other ones.

57:20

Yeah, they're like 30 feet. So they're like the longest snake in the python family. Oh, is

57:30

Alfredo named that because of the sauce? Yes, he is.

57:38

We thought it was a fun name for these pied and half of them's white. So and then we named all of our ball pythons except for one are named after pasta.

57:50

So we have, yeah, quite a few pasta named snakes.

57:58

Is the skink that you brought out, the blue tongue skink, is it overweight or is he just, is that just normal for the way a skink should be?

58:07

That is just normal for the weight. So everyone's like, why is your skink so fat? But they're just like really heavy bodied animals.

58:14

And they have those tiny legs that helps them burrow into the ground with the small legs. But that's what they're supposed to look like.

58:21

If you look at them in the wild, they are pretty chonky. And his name is

58:27

Tamale. Because he looks like a tamale. Okay, there's a couple more questions coming in.

58:38

Who do you think would win in a fight between a boa and a python? It depends on the species.

58:46

I mean, if you get a retic, I feel like retics, they're the longest species of snake in the world.

58:52

I feel like they would probably trump everything. They're just beasts.

59:00

And then Jess wants to know, so you mentioned that with Alex.

59:07

He's been with you since he was a baby. So it seems like he's very comfortable with you.

59:13

The other birds, especially when you get them new, do you have to train them to sit on your arm? Or like, does that take a while?

59:21

Or how does that go? So it depends on the bird. Some birds we get in, a lot of the parrots, some of them are super abused.

59:30

And I've had birds that I can't even like touch them for over a year. And I work with them pretty much every day.

59:37

So I've had some birds we get in and they'll step up and they're good to go. And some birds we'll work with for two years before we can touch them.

59:45

And sometimes I've had one of my birds we never could hold. He wouldn't let people hold him.

59:52

I could pet him, but it took a year and a half before he would stop going into like a full panic when he saw a person.

01:00:01

So it really is variable on the bird. Okay, well, we're going to wrap up our public time now.

01:00:08

So if you could remind everybody one more time how they can find your ministry and support you.

01:00:15

Yeah, so you can hop on DoeRiverGorge .com or you can hop on GenesisAnimalSanctuary .com

01:00:23

or .org, sorry, GenesisAnimalSanctuary .org. You can find that there is on both places.

01:00:30

There's donation links. If you're interested in like supporting us personally in our ministry, you can find that through the

01:00:39

Genesis website or you can go into the staff page of the DoeRiverGorge website because we do raise money as missionaries to do what we do.

01:00:48

Yeah, perfect. All right, and we are Creation Fellowship Santee and you can find a list of our upcoming speakers by typing in tinyurl .com

01:00:59

CFSantee. C like creation, F like fellowship. Santee is spelled

01:01:04

S -A -N -T -E -E or you can also email us at creationfellowshipsantee at gmail .com

01:01:11

to get on our email list so that you will get notifications and invitations for all of our upcoming speakers.

01:01:18

with that, we're going to go ahead and sign off the live stream for tonight. So.