MURMURATION, STARLINGS, LIQUID MASS, BIRD FLIGHTS, #MURMURATION #CHRISTIAN #CREATION SCIENCE

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS MURMURATION?

Good day all of you out there! How are you all doing this week? I am slightly better but still have cough and am week from the pneumonia. But I am so thankful that little by little I am getting better. And I must thank all my friends out there who have been praying for my health.

What is murmuration? At many different sites throughout Europe (and anywhere there are starlings) tens of thousands or even millions of starlings gather together. If they are spooked by a predator they fly all together twisting and turning in amazing formations called murmuration. Murmuration is “a huge flock (of birds— starlings to be exact) that shape-shifts in the sky as if it were one swirling liquid mass. Often the behavior is sparked by the

presence of a predator like a hawk or peregrine falcon, and the flock's movement is based on evasive maneuvers. There is safety in numbers, so the individual starlings do not scatter, but rather are able to move as an intelligent cloud, feinting away from a diving raptor, thousands of birds changing direction almost simultaneously. The question that has had scientists stumped is how a bird, tens or hundreds of birds away from those nearest danger, sense the shift and move in unison?”¹ (emphasis is my own). 

“Researchers can describe starlings’ motion with the equations of physics, not with biology. The flock behaves like a liquid at the critical moment when it turns into a gas, always on the edge and ready to change state at any second. But how does a whole flock of living creatures react to changes like a single organism?”²

Scientists discovered that the birds only react to those that are nearest it. Actually an individual bird is affected by it’s seven closest neighbors. “So one bird affects its seven closest neighbors, and each of those neighbors' movements affect their closest seven neighbors and on through the flock. This is how a flock is able to look like a twisting, morphing cloud with some parts moving in one direction at one speed and other parts moving at another direction and at another speed…Why seven? It's one of those numbers that just works in nature, and a systems-theoretic approach to studying starling flocks showed it. ‘Interacting with six or seven neighbors optimizes the balance between group

cohesiveness and individual effort,’ write the researchers. The exact workings of starling murmurations is something we have yet to fully understand…”³ 

 One of those numbers that just works in nature? Intelligent cloud? How can these be acceptable science and the theory that an Intelligent Designer placed a code in the original DNA that would create this kind of behavior be not acceptable? 

So the question is, do you believe in numbers that just work? Or in a loving God who cares about his creation, and about you. We here on earth may never fully figure out how such a display works, but one day we will be able to ask the Creator Himself!

Until next time, God bless and take care,

Willow Dressel

PS IF you go to youtube and type in murmuration, you will be able to view some really beautiful clips.

References:

^1,3http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/the-incredible-science-behind-starling-murmurations

²Author unknown, Synchronized Starlings, Answers Magazine, January-February 2017 Vol. 12 No. 1, p22.