Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose by Eberlin Marcos

Author:Eberlin, Marcos [Eberlin, Marcos]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781936599660
Publisher: Discovery Institute
Published: 2019-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.2. The mantis shrimp’s club-like appendage system works like a crossbow, delivering one of the most powerful punches on Earth. In proportion to its body size, it beats former heavyweight champion boxer Mike Tyson by an order of magnitude.

A key feature of this powerful jab is is a tiny structure in the arm that is reminiscent of a saddle, which is also compressed during cocking and functions like a spring, storing additional energy. When the latch releases, the saddle-like structure expands and provides additional push for the club, accelerating it at upwards of 10,000 g-forces,28 powerful enough to shatter the glass of a shrimp tank. The design is similar to one used by human engineers.

But how can the mantis shrimp deliver punches so quickly and powerfully without injuring itself? The shrimp comes equipped with its own high-tech boxing glove.

We have only recently uncovered this engineering marvel.29 The frontal impact region of the club is very thick and made of a bone-like material: hydroxyapatite crystals. Angled perpendicularly to the surface, each crystal forms a column that provides high compressive strength and can take up to four billion pascals of pressure. (Air pressure at sea level is about 100,000 pascals.) How does that structure compare to human technology? Forged at extremely high temperatures of over 2,700°F, human-made analogues such as ceramics can take only two or three billion pascals of pressure.

Next to the impact region are protein fibers ingeniously designed in stacked layers. “In each one, the fibers are all parallel, but each layer is rotated slightly from the one underneath it to produce a helical structure,” Yong writes. “Finally, the space between the fibers is filled with haphazardly arranged minerals,” preventing any cracks from spreading through the club. The mantis shrimp’s club is further wrapped in chitin fibers, compressing the entire structure to slow the spread of cracks, “like a boxer who places tape around their fists,” as described by Dr. David Kisalius.30

Evolutionary theory claims that mantis shrimp evolved all these features to fill special needs posed by their environment. National Geographic science writer Ed Yong explains: “Some scientists think that the mantis shrimps’ belligerent nature evolved because the rock crevices they inhabit are fiercely contested. This competition has also made these animals smarter than the average shrimp. They are the only invertebrates that can recognize other individuals of their species and can remember the outcome of a fight against a rival for up to a month.”31 All that is to say, if punching hard and being smart in a tough neighborhood comes in handy, evolution will come to the rescue with power punches and an IQ boost. It’s a nice story but fails to explain how the tiny shrimp actually developed all this technology and know-how by unguided trial and error, one small functional mutation at a time. All the pieces of the punching mechanism had to be in place for it to work, so it’s reasonable to doubt that such an evolutionary pathway is really possible.

Carnivorous Plants

CARNIVOROUS PLANTS (Figure 5.

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