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Science fiction is filled with strange creatures. Usually they want to eat us, kill us, rule over us, or something like that. In some stories, the creatures land from space. In others, they are created by a mad scientist or result from an accident during an experiment. A few are discovered lurking in remote places, orphaned from the past.
Can you imagine a creature that is part plant and part animal? As crazy as it sounds, such a creature exists. In real life, not fiction. Sea slugs of a certain type eat algae. Their body extracts chloroplast cells from the algae and transports them to structures on its back. These cells absorb sunshine through the slugs transparent skin and produce energy through photosynthesis. The slug generates the exact chemicals needed to sustain the chloroplasts, including chlorophyll and several other enzymes.
The slugs also eat sea anemones. They are not damaged by the anemones stinging cells. Those are transported to the slugs skin and used for its own defense
How did this creature develop? Did some kind of cross-DNA mashup between the sea slug and the algae occur in the past to enable this? No evidence of DNA mixing exists. Scientists know of no mechanism to enable it. I don’t think they are the result of some accident. And people didn’t make them. But their complex systems were design and created by our fascinating, intelligent God.*
*Frank Sherwin, Brian Thomas, Jeffrey P. Tomkins, James J.S. Johnson, Scott Arledge, Fascinating Creatures: Evidence of Christ’s Handiwork, (Dallas, Texas: Institute for Creation Research, 2022), 37-39.
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Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.