An Evolutionist Fairy Tale about Mormyrids (Elephant Fish)

In its July 2006 edition, the Turkish scientific journal Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology) published an article titled “A Snapshot of Evolution with the Electric Fish.” The article reported a study conducted in the African country Gabon by researchers from Cornell University in the USA. Working along the banks of the Ivindo River, the researchers performed measurements on the electric fish living in the river.

In its July 2006 edition, the Turkish scientific journal Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology) published an article titled “A Snapshot of Evolution with the Electric Fish.” The article reported a study conducted in the African country Gabon by researchers from Cornell University in the USA. Working along the banks of the Ivindo River, the researchers performed measurements on the electric fish living in the river. The fish in question were known as mormyrids (or elephant fishes), and each mormyrid species was able to communicate states such as fear, aggression and courtship to other individuals and made use of its own unique series of electrical signals. The researchers investigated the DNA of the fish, which use a batterylike organ in their tails, and found that although the fish produce different signals, they possessed the same DNA sequences.

It was suggested in the Bilim ve Teknik article that fish that produced different signals and displayed different behavior despite having the same DNA sequences were “a snapshot of evolution.”

However, this claim goes no further than being conjecture. Even evolutionists admit that in order to be able to depict biological change as evolution it needs to be related to inheritance. The characteristic that constitutes a biological novelty has to emerge on the basis of new information added to the DNA and to be installed and disseminated among subsequent generations. In the study in question, however, the researchers found that electric fish had the “same” DNA sequences. It is unscientific to engage in evolutionary speculation solely on the basis of behavioral differences in the absence of any change in DNA. It is obvious that whatever kind of signal the fish use to communicate, their behavior in this regard will not alter the information in their DNA, for which reason it will lead to no genetic change. In short, there is no evidence supporting any “evolutionary” speculation.

If evolutionist researchers intend to use these fish to provide evidence for their theories, they first have to explain in detail how the organs that emit these signals originally emerged and what kind of mutations might have given rise to such an organ. Yet the study in question reveals no findings in that direction, and actually has nothing to do with it at all. What is done is to regard everything to do with the fish as an evolutionary process and then to interpret behavioral differences in that light. It is obvious that this is not science but a blind belief.

Our advice to Bilim ve Teknik magazine is that it put aside its dogmatic devotion to Darwinism and develop a new conception of publishing that objectively interprets scientific findings. If it does that, readers will have the opportunity to learn the scientific facts rather than fairy tales adopted for ideological reasons.