Nothing is more beautiful during the late spring and summer than the appearance of butterflies that float so gracefully around the flowers in our gardens and yards. Indeed, some of them have such amazing lives, but I would like to turn our attention to the butterfly fish!
Butterfly fish live in freshwater streams in the rainforest of Congo, Africa. The fish is relatively small, being no more than five to six inches long. Butterfly fish normally are very slow moving and prefer to spend their time lying around near the surface in floating plants. They are like many slow-moving, surface-dwelling fish in that they are able to use their swim bladder to breathe air by gulping air at the surface. When seen from above, the widespread pectoral fins of the butterfly fish look just like the decorative wings of its namesake insect, the butterfly. The fins are a silvery brownish green and patterned with dark markings.
Yet, these fins have other uses than just being decorative and given to this fish by the Creator. When it is attacked, it jumps up and seemly flies out of the water as a predator attempts to eat it. The large pectoral fins (the fins located on the sides of a fish) flap and glide up out of the water and away from danger. You can relate this to the jumps out of the water of the flying fish in the oceans. People who have witnessed these jumps say that the nearest thing to this fish’s appearance is the flight of a butterfly.
Besides using the pectoral fins as wings to escape from predators, they also help this fish leap from the water to capture terrestrial insects from above the surface of the water. This feature gives the butterfly fish an advantage over fish that must wait for the insects to fall into the water. The butterfly fish’s eyes are upturned so it can see only things above it, and its mouth turns upward to eat insects from above. In addition, the brain of the butterfly fish has extra bundles of neurons for viewing objects above it. So, when the Creator designed the butterfly fish, allowing it to use its fins for multiple purposes, He showed His amazing engineering design ability and created the complete package to fill its niche in creation.
When evolutionary scientists try to explain the existence of the butterfly fish, they must also explain the fact that they have also been found in the fossil record in a completely unchanged appearance. They call these creatures that are found as fossils and yet that are alive today in the exact same form, living fossils. According to the old earth dating methods of evolutionists, butterfly fish have remained unchanged for 100 million years! This fish as well as all living fossils baffle evolutionary scientists, and they must come up with special exceptions to their natural selection process to theorize this.
The butterfly fish stands as proof of the marvels of the creation that we can see that fortifies our faith in our Creator. “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him” (Colossians 1:16).
