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Natural selection does not produce new genetic information that leads to different types of birds.
Many readers must have rubbed their eyes when they saw the headline: “Swallows are evolving shorter wings because they keep getting hit by traffic.”* A study on why vehicles were killing millions of birds somehow took on a Darwinian twist.
For three decades, researchers studied cliff swallows that build nests on highway overpasses. Over the years, the number of sparrows killed by passing cars kept decreasing. Researchers noticed that the wing length of the swallow population had also decreased. The conclusion? Longer-winged swallows are more susceptible to getting hit because they are slower to fly away from oncoming vehicles. Short-winged birds had a survival advantage that “selected” them over the longer-winged ones.
Creationists have no difficulty acknowledging that such selection occurs and that it can lead to minor variation within species (in this case, wings that are 1/6-inch [4 mm] shorter). But such selection does not, and cannot, produce new genetic information that leads to different types of birds. Furthermore, such research does not even begin to explain how the incredibly designed feather and wing first came about.
To be fair, the researchers did not call this slight difference in wing length an example of molecules-to-man evolution. The media did. But evolution is so ingrained in modern thinking that most people interpret any biological change as evidence that all living things on earth arose from this same process. Headlines like “Swallows are evolving shorter wings because they keep getting hit by traffic” continue to fuel this uncritical acceptance of Darwinism and turn hearts away from the Creator and His Word, beginning in Genesis.
Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.