God's Perfect Predators

 

Sharks don't need a fork or a spoon to clean their plate. God has given them everything they need to be great predators (an animal that hunts and eats other animals). Sharks can do many extraordinary things that enable them to be great hunters. In fact, their vision is so keen that in dim light they can see 10 times better than people. They can smell their food more than a mile away (that's more than seventeen football fields)! Imagine smelling a hotdog 17 football fields away. Besides that, they have pores in their snouts filled with a special jelly that can detect electrical signals. Sharks use these pores to detect signals caused by the nervous systems of their prey. If you took two AA batteries out of your TV remote control and dropped them a mile apart in the ocean, a shark could sense their electrical signals.

Besides having keen senses, sharks can move quickly. The mako shark can swim at 40 miles an hour (most cities won't even let cars travel that fast on their streets). In addition to traveling quickly, sharks are very flexible, which allows them to catch food by thrashing their bodies in many different directions. A shark never should chase his tail, because he probably would catch it!

God has given sharks many other special features that allow them to stay on top of the food chain. Sharks are one of the few creatures that can replace all of their teeth. If a shark bites into something too hard and it causes his teeth to chip, break, or fall out, it doesn't matter much because a new tooth will replace it in a few days. If humans could do the same, most dentists would be out of work.

Some sharks are equipped with even more amazing features. The tiger shark can spit its stomach out of its mouth to get rid of rocks, bottles, boat propellers or anything else that can't be digested. The shark then swallows its stomach again and is ready for its next meal.

Sharks are designed to be such good eaters that sometimes they get carried away. Inside the bellies of some sharks, people have found shoes, dogs, a driver's license, a cow's hoof, deer antlers, medieval armor and a chicken coop. If you live near the ocean and have lost a shoe in the past few weeks, maybe you should ask the nearest shark if he has seen it.

Some people suggest that evolution produced this great ocean predator. But evolution never could create an animal this amazing. Only God could do that—and He did! "So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind..." (Gen. 1:21).

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