More than Meets the Eye

What’s your favorite summer sight? A rainbow? An orange-pink sunset? Beautiful flowers? Busy bugs? Baby birds? There are lots of wonderful sights out there right now.

Correction: There are lots and lots of wonderful sights out there. We can’t see all of them. Some are way too small for us to see. They’re meant for bug eyes and not ours. Others are simply tucked away in places that we can‘t see. Yet these are all vital, working parts of creation.

Here’s the point:  There’s more than meets the eye out there. Creation is much more complex than we’ll ever know. Read these pages for some amazing examples that can be found near you. Then thank God for giving us this wonderful world.

Point of View

Answer this quickly: What color are dandelions?

Yellow, right? Sort of. It depends on your point of view.

Bug’s eyes see different things than people’s eyes do. If you were a bug, you’d look at a dandelion and see a splotchy checkerboard pattern. You’d see plain petals with splotches of dark colors in the middle.

Because bugs need nectar and pollen, God made their eyes able to look for them. Bugs often see the flower parts that hold nectar and pollen as dark targets in the middle of pale petals. Sometimes they see lines pointing like arrows to those parts.

You don’t need pollen and nectar, so those parts don‘t stand out to you. Yet you can see a flower’s beauty. That’s perfect, from either point of view.

Designer Bugs

Try this: Go outside and sit very quietly in some natural place. You’ll soon see little “dots” scuttling along the ground, creeping up a plant, or dancing in the air. Those are designer bugs. They’re specks of life designed perfectly for their role in creation.

Take fairyflies for example. Their role in creation is to keep other bugs in check. They do this by laying eggs inside the eggs of other bugs. No wonder they’re so small!

But small doesn’t mean simple. Fairyflies eat, breathe, and reproduce just like other living creatures. They’ve got all the right systems tucked inside of them, and all those systems work. Their flight systems are especially amazing.

Imagine a tiny speck trying to fly. A slight breeze could send it way off course. The poor bug wouldn’t be able to make any headway. So it’s been given fringed wings to help it fly. Some wings are almost all fringe, so the fairyfly floats rather like a dandelion seed.

Some fairyflies lay eggs in bug eggs found in water. They use their wings like oars and paddle through the water. And they hold their breath to go beneath the water.

There are about 1,400 types of fairyflies. Each type is made a little differently. Imagine how many different fairyfly designs there are.

But fairyflies are only one of several designer bugs. Imagine how many designer bugs are out there. In creation, there’s not only more than we can see—there’s way more than we can imagine!

It’s in the Air

When you go outside, do you sometimes cough and sneeze, snuffle and wheeze? Most likely there’s pollen in the air. Pollen makes some people cough, sneeze, and snuffle.

You can’t see pollen grains because they’re so tiny. Ragweed pollen (which is out right now) is a good example. You must place 25,000 grains side by side to cover one inch of space.

Yet those pollen grains are beautiful. Every plant’s pollen grains have a unique shape. Ragweed pollen has spikes. Other pollen may have knobs, ridges, lumps, bumps, or a combination of those. The variation is endless. The designs are wonderful.

Although you can’t see pollen grains, you can see pictures of them. Go to google.com/images and type in “pollen grains.” You’ll see some beauties, and they’re all the work of God, the Master Designer.

Pollen is only one very tiny part of a normal-sized flowering plant. Can you imagine a whole plant too small to see? Read about that in “Small Wonders.”

Small Wonders

Got a pond nearby? Does it have green stuff floating on the water? That “stuff” may be thousands of separate, tiny Wolffia plants. Wolffia is related to duckweed but is much smaller.

One Wolffia plant is small enough to slip through the eye of a needle. It weighs the same as two grains of table salt. Two plants in bloom could fit inside this o. A bouquet of 12 flowers can fit onto the head of a pin. Any way you consider it, that’s tiny.

But it’s also complicated. Wolffia flowers must cross-pollinate. That’s a complicated process. The plants can also form buds that make new plants. Two ways to reproduce! Wolffia leaves have breathing holes that open and close as needed. That takes special cells.

Get the idea? Wolffia truly is a small wonder. And most people think that it’s only green pond scum. What other small wonders are out there?

See for Yourself

What’s hidden in soil? What’s too small to see in water? Check out these websites.

Soil biology movies:
www.agron.iastate.edu/~loynachan/mov/
Click on any picture to learn about the creature.

The smallest page on the Web:
www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/wimsmall/x_smal1.html
Click on the picture of the water droplet to see what lives in pond water.