Spiders Can Cross Oceans
Why did the spider cross the ocean? To colonize the Old World after it “originated” in the New World.
It seems inconceivable for creatures as small as spiders to play Columbus, but they did. Their ships were rafts of vegetation, a short article in Nature said this week (Nature 485, 31 May 2012, p. 550, doi:10.1038/485550a). “A family of harvestmen that inhabits tropical forests on both sides of the Pacific Ocean originated in Mesoamerica roughly 82 million years ago,” the journal claimed. “The arachnids’ migration is a rare example of a trans-Pacific dispersal.”
A genetic comparison of harvestmen from old and new worlds led Harvard scientists to conclude that the spiders got from Brazil to Indo-Pacific islands. “The creatures probably did not disperse through the break-up of the supercontinent Gondwana, so the authors speculate that they made their way across the Pacific on floating vegetation carried by ocean currents.”
Let’s see if the evolutionary explanation makes sense. The spiders, we are told, “originated” in Mesoamerica. That’s really helpful, isn’t it? How did the world form? It originated. Why is there air? It originated. Where did the philosophy of origins come from? It originated. Try that at home; even your kids know you’re dodging their question.
Next, we are told that the migration across the ocean is “a rare example of a trans-Pacific dispersal.” You don’t say. No kidding; once in 82 million years is pretty rare. What could have gotten into those little spidey brains in that one generation to make them want to colonize new worlds? Is this a new law of nature? If so, we should see them hopping on vegetation rafts all the time, mixing their genomes up between continents, not doing it once after originating.
Evolutionists tell their tales this way because they’ve anchored their thoughts to an imaginary timeline Darwin needed, with its millions and millions of years. In their tale, a supercontinent (that “originated” who knows how) had to break up at a certain time. The spiders, who “originated” after MesoAmerica “originated,” couldn’t have just ridden the drifting continent, so they had to swim or take a cruise ship. Whatever “the authors speculate” to keep the story intact (with its millions of years) gets sanctified as science these days.
These are the same people who will scoff at the Biblical Flood story as nonsense, saying there is no possible way for animals to get from the Middle East to the rest of the world. When a creation scientist offers the possibility that some of them floated on mats of vegetation, the laughter gets rip-roarin’ crazy.