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Today's Creation Moment

Meerkat School
Exodus 4:15b

Trilobite Eyes

Romans 1:20a

A tiny parasitic insect has eyes and a lifestyle that are unique among living things. Actually, only the male members of the species Xenos peckii have eyes. The females spend their short lives inside the paper wasps they infest and don't have eyes. After a male hatches inside a wasp, it emerges from the wasp and uses its entire two hour adult lifespan searching for a wasp infected with a female of its species.

The males' eyes are unlike the eyes of any other living thing. Each faceted eye has 50 lenses. And each of the bulging lenses has more than 100 photoreceptors. Researchers say that about 75 percent of the parasite's brain is devoted to processing the visual information collected by the eyes. This in itself shows design, since the males have only two hours to find a mate within another paper wasp. While no other living creatures have a visual system like this, the structure of the eyes seems similar to the now-extinct trilobite.

While tiny and seemingly unimportant, this small parasite is a testimony to God's ingenious creativity. What's more, the fact that it has a unique visual system carefully designed for its unique way of living leaves no known creature for it to have evolved from.

I praise You in wonder, dear Father, for the way in which the creation bears witness to You as its Creator. Amen.
Science News, "Living insect with eyes like trilobites'," 12/4/99, p.361.