Animals, Australia, & the Flood
What do kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, and dingoes have in common, and what do they have to do with defending the Bible?
Kangaroos
Kangaroos are marsupials, having a pouch where they carry their young. They can grow to be over six feet tall, can leap over 25 feet in one bound (almost a first down in one jump!), and can hop at over 35 miles per hour.
They can use their powerful legs to kick knock-out blows against their enemies and pound the ground to warn other kangaroos of danger. Though they grow to be formidable “foot boxers,” kangaroo babies, called joeys, are about one inch long at birth (about the size of a large grape) and stay in their mother’s pouch for the first 10 months of their lives.
Tasmanian Devils
Tasmanian devils are the largest of the carnivorous (meat-eating) marsupials, with lengths ranging from 20-31 inches. They have an oversized head and very strong jaws, just like the Tasmanian Devil in Looney Tunes® cartoons. They were no doubt named “devils” due to the ferocious growls they make when they “fly off the handle” in a fight or in pursuit of a mate. They will eat just about anything, including bones and hair.
Dingoes
Dingoes are thought to be among the varieties found in the dog “kind” (Genesis 1:24-25) that emerged after the Flood, along with wolves, coyotes, jackals, foxes, and domestic dogs. One reason we know they are in the dog kind is that they are able to breed with domestic dogs, creating hybrid offspring. Though they can breed with domestic dogs, they don’t bark like dogs: they howl like wolves. They are only 3-4 feet tall, but they are the largest land predators in Australia. While they are an important food source for some people (ew!), others consider dingoes to be a nuisance. The Dingo Fence is a 3,307-mile-long fence that was built to keep dingoes from eating shepherds’ sheep.
Have you guessed what these three animals share that relates to defending the Bible? All three of these animals, and several other species, are found, almost exclusively, in Australia and its surrounding islands (New
Guinea and Tasmania). But many evolutionists have asked, how did they get way out there if the biblical Flood happened?
How Did Animals Get to Australia after the flood?
If the Flood covered the whole Earth, killing all of the land animals, how did animals get across oceans to other continents, like North America and Australia? There are at least five possibilities.
1. Closer Continents
First, there is strong evidence that the continents may have been joined in one supercontinent before the Flood. The Flood then broke it apart and moved the continents around quickly. The continents are still moving today, but much slower. However, right after the Flood, the continents would have still been much closer together than they are today. Traveling from continent to continent would not have been as difficult.
2. Log “Islands”
Still, in some cases, animals would have had to travel across water. How would they do that? One possibility would be that they floated on log mats. When catastrophes happen today, like volcanoes and tsunamis, many trees are often torn from the ground and washed away in island-sized clumps (see photo of Spirit Lake).
Animals have been found floating in the ocean on trees that were ripped up when tsunamis hit coastlines. Imagine how many log islands there would have been after a catastrophe as big as the Flood, and imagine the size of those log mats! Even Charles Darwin, the “Father of Evolution,” agreed that travel on floating log mats is a reasonable possibility for how animals could travel great distances on the ocean. At least two possibilities have to do
with the Ice Age.
3. Land Bridges
At the peak of the Ice Age, enough water was frozen at the poles and on continents to lower the sea level worldwide over 400 feet. That means that many parts of the Earth that are now under water—along coasts, for example—would have been dry land. The continents would have extended further. A land bridge between Asia and North America (Alaska), called the Bering Strait today, would have been open, since the water depth between the two is only 100-160 feet deep. Similarly, much of the water separating Asia from Australia, between Malaysia and Indonesia, New Guinea and Australia, would not have been present, creating a land bridge most of the way to Australia. The English Channel, which today separates England from France, would have been dry land. Ireland and Scotland would have been connected as well.
4. Frozen Channels
While glaciers only cover about 10% of the continents today, during the Ice Age they covered about 30%. Much of northern Europe was covered in ice, for example. Glaciation could have allowed travel to some islands.
5. Humans Brought Them
One final possibility is that humans, who are smart enough to travel across oceans, brought animals to places like Australia. Evolutionists believe animals were living in Australia long before humans “evolved” onto the scene, so this possibility would not help them explain how animals arrived in Australia. But according to the Bible, humans and animals have lived together from the very beginning.
Getting animals to Australia and other areas of the world that are now separated by water is not a problem for creationists and the biblical Flood. Several logical and reasonable possibilities are available. Before evolutionists and atheists scoff at the Bible, they should keep in mind that if getting animals to Australia was actually a problem for biblical Creation and the Flood, it would also be a problem for evolution. Evolutionists also must have a logical explanation for how animals made it to Australia.
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