by Amy Beange

The Psalmist proclaims, “The earth is the Lord’s and all its fullness/The earth is full of the goodness of the LORD”. The more we investigate the world the more that fullness and goodness reveals itself, showing amazing design in its landmasses, oceans, weather, flora and fauna.

We can start with the oceans. Thirteen million tons of water evaporate from them every second. Because the earth is tilted different parts get different amounts of radiation from the sun and so temperatures vary drastically which creates winds as areas with cool, dry high-pressure air move to areas with warm, moist, low-pressure areas. These winds carry all that evaporated ocean water great distances where it falls in an uneven pattern. The Amazon receives so much rain that at times parts of the jungle are flooded up to 10 meters and dolphins move in for a time. 

The strangely named desert rain frog lives in parts of southern Africa where rainfall is scarce – this marshmallow sized critter escapes the sun by spending its life in a burrow except for night excursions to forage for termites, which at 75% water, give a nutritious snack and drink all in one. Desert rain frogs need more water than that and so only live in deserts that get at least 100 days of fog per year – fog condenses into water beads that drop to the sand where the frog absorbs them by simply sitting in the sand. When it is time to mate, the smaller males whistle and the lady that fancies the tune allows him to glue himself to her back whereupon she waddles (these frogs can’t jump), back to her burrow where she lays her eggs and awaits her little froglets – minus the tadpole stage.

What about the atmosphere that hovers above the oceans? It is composed of 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, with a few other gases rounding out the remaining 1%. This composition is critical – an increase of oxygen would lead to oxygen poisoning and a greater propensity for things to catch fire. An increase of nitrogen would lead to toxic algae blooms in bodies of water and a degrading of the ozone layer which shields us from the sun’s radiation. The circulation of all the evaporated water will do little good without a habitable zone closer to ground ready to receive it.

And what a zone it is! From pole to pole the earth measures about 20 000 km. Yet this distance is routine for the Sooty Shearwater, the most travelled bird of all which nests in the southern hemisphere, migrates to the northern and then comes back – all in one year. That means that over a lifetime a Shearwater might fly the equivalent distance of going to the moon and back.

While the Shearwater might hold the record for endurance, the Eider duck, one of the world’s largest ducks, must surely win for strongest. It lives by the ocean and it possesses the strength to withstand and thrive within the strongest tidal current in the world, found at the Saltstraumen Strait of Norway, where half a billion tons of water are forced through a narrow channel every six hours. At the base of the strait lies a vast bed of mussels upon which the Eider ducks dine – swallowing whole hundreds a day. They are capable of diving up to 40 meters so this feat is a snap!

Extreme flying and swimming are well and good but what about simply existing in extreme environments? The Bactrian camel lives in the Gobi Desert where temperatures vary between 40 below and 40 above. While humans can only tolerate a body temperature change of two or three degrees this camel can manage changes of six degrees and can tolerate losing up to 40% of its body weight in water loss. The live through the winter freeze up of water holes by eating snow.

Some animals tolerate winter’s extremes by passing the season in a deep sleep. The wood frog follows a different method. It digs a shallow burrow, sucks the water out of its cells, replaces it with a sugary “anti-freeze”, and freezes solid with the plummeting temperatures. In spring, it thaws with the new warmth, its blood melts, its heart starts beating, it crawls out and it hops away.

How does it know the timing of all this? Animals are governed by their circadian rhythm which is tied to the cycle of daylight and darkness – it lets them know when to sleep and when to be awake and is necessary for physical and mental health. Not only are animals regulated by the circadian rhythm, but they are affected by “photoperiodism” which is a longer internal calendar that alerts animals to where they are in the year. This is the clock that tells them it is spring – that there is plenty of food available and it is therefore a good time to mate, birth and raise young – or that it is autumn and they ought to be preparing to hibernate. Or, in the wood frog’s case, to freeze. Photoperiodism is what influences reindeer eyes to shade golden in the perpetual high-light months of summer and to shift to light-sensitive blue for the low-light conditions of the endless winter. 

It is also photoperiodism that tells deciduous trees that winter is coming and to stop producing chlorophyll which allows the other pigments to come to the fore, revealing striking shades of yellow, orange and gold, as well as to sever connections with each leaf by forming a protective seal where the leaf joins the branch, allowing them to fall as the tree shuts down for winter. 

But not all plants live in areas where the temperatures change all that much, month by month and so they remain green year-round. The jungle varieties of fig tree even produce fruit continuously via a curious partnership with the fig wasp. The tree’s fruit is pollinated by the wasp which burrows into a fig, lays her eggs and dies. The males hatch first and fertilize the unhatched females before burrowing out of the fig, creating an escape hatch for the later females. The females that follow have just 48 hours to find another fig at just the right stage of development to crawl into to lay her eggs and continue the cycle. A truly symbiotic relationship.

On our hikes with friends we might ask them what they believe about the abundance of life all around us – how did it get here? Does it have a purpose? What is it telling us? As Christians, we believe there is a Mind behind it all; a Person who is himself bursting with life and vitality. The earth, teeming with incredible varieties of life, is an expression of his life which overflows to us here and now. We look on it as a testimony to his goodness and power and as an invitation to join with our maker in life and joy, both here and now and into eternity!