  
Birds That Deactivate Poison: Macaws
 When a person
is infected with poison, his only recourse is to take a drug
to counter the effects of the poison or to remove the poison
from his body through medical intervention. Otherwise, a person
who lacks specialized knowledge about poisons will be unable
to cure himself through using a plant or some other kind of
counteractive substance.
Yet, some creatures innately have this knowledge that most
people must learn through education. Certain animals, which
do not possess minds to be educated, any intelligence and,
in short, any consciousness at all, can cure themselves very
easily. The striking feature about the methods animals use
to cure themselves is that they know what to do very well
and have determined what is good for each particular illness.
Is it really the animals themselves who have determined these
things? How have animals come to possess such knowledge? Evolutionists
claim that most animal behavior such as this is instinctive.
However, they cannot explain the origin of these behaviors
or how they originally came to exist.
First of all, it is not possible for creatures to learn these
behaviors over time. An animal that is poisoned, for example,
will die right away. In this case, it is not possible for
it to imagine how it might remove the factor that caused it
to be poisoned. Besides, we should by no means forget that
animals lack the consciousness capable of thinking up such
a solution.
Let us see, by giving an example, how animals display conscious
behavior while curing themselves. Macaws, which are a kind
of parrot, are found in the tropical regions of Central and
South America. One of the most striking feature of these creatures,
besides their truly dazzling colors, is that they feed on
poisonous seeds. These birds, who can break even very tough
shells with their hooked beaks, are experts on the subject
of poisonous seeds. This is a somewhat surprising situation
because, when the bird eats a poisonous seed, normally it
should suffer harm. Yet, amazingly, this does not happen.
Immediately after the bird eats the poisonous seeds, it flies
directly towards a rocky place and begins to gnaw and swallow
the clayey rock pieces there. The reason for this behavior
is that the clayey rock pieces absorb the toxins in the seeds,
and so neutralize the effects of the poison. In this way,
the birds can digest the seeds without experiencing any harm.
It is certainly impossible for macaws to know on their own
how to neutralize or counteract the poison found in the seeds
they eat. It is evident that such conscious behaviors in creatures
do not originate from themselves, and that their origin cannot
be sought in some other force or factor that exists in nature
either. An invisible power controls the behavior of all creatures
and, in other words, inspires them with what to do. This matchless
power belongs to Allah. Allah, Who is the owner of a superior
knowledge, is the Preserver of all things.
|
