‘THE PRIZE HORSE IN OUR STABLE’
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| The prominent dark and camouflaged light varieties of the peppered moth on bark. |
One of the supposed evidences for natural selection and therefore the evolutionary process, is the variation in the peppered moth. It is an example that appears in almost every textbook on evolution. The story is that the moths were originally of a light colour and thus were camouflaged when they settled on the trunks of lichen-covered trees. But with the advent of industrial processes that polluted the air, the tree trunks became darker due to the lack of lichen and an increase in sooty deposits. Thus the moths stood out like the proverbial sore thumb and were rapidly picked off by the birds.
However, in time the moths responded by becoming darker to match the trunks and so they were camouflaged once more. Here we are told, is evolution in action! This is an example of a story that has universally been taken up and quite innocently repeated by advocates of evolution without themselves having investigated the subject. As is so frequent in this field, everyone else assumes that all the appropriate checks have been made.
In fact the darker form of moth existed well before the Industrial Revolution and all that happened was that the darker form later became more prominent. So it wasn't a question of a new form developing – it was already there. In fact the dark form exists quite happily in rural situations as far apart as Scotland, Canada and New Zealand, where it suffers no disadvantage from its colour.
The experiments, first carried out by a scientist named Kettlewell in the 1950’s, are now regarded as suspect. What is not generally known is that some of the experiments were done in artificial conditions in an aviary. Unlike in the natural situation, specially bred moths were actually placed by the experimenters on the trunks within reach of the ground; then birds were filmed feeding on them. This is hardly what happens in the wild and when the experiments were repeated in natural conditions the results were variable. It is now recognised that the moths only fly by night when the birds are not active and in the daytime they conceal themselves high up amongst the foliage, rather than be sitting targets on the tree trunks.17 Moreover, when tests were actually carried out in woodland conditions, the results were very inconclusive.18
In addition, what of those pictures in the textbooks, such as the one reproduced here? One scientific paper describes how it was done. The pictures were not taken from nature, but dead moths were glued to the trees! 19 As a result of this re-evaluation of the subject, what was once described by one evolutionist as ‘the prize horse in our stable’ has now been discarded by many. An evolutionist says that when he realised this it gave him that same feeling as when he as a boy discovered Santa Claus was not real! 20 This is an outstanding example of what Professor P. Johnson describes as how ‘devotion to the ideology of Darwinism has led to textbooks full of misinformation’. 21
References
17
C.A.Clarke: ‘Evolution in reverse…’, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
26: 189-199,1985.
18 M.Bowden: ‘Science Vs
Evolution,’ Appendix 3, pages 194-211 (Sovereign Publications, 1991).
19 D.R.Lees and E.R. Creed:
‘Journal of Animal Ecology,’ 44: 67-83,1975. J.Wells: ‘Icons of Evolution:
Science or Myth (Regnery Publishing Inc. 2000).
20 J.A.Coyne: Nature 396(6706):
35,36.
21 Quoted by J.Wells: ‘Icons of
Evolution’, back cover.