Ask a Baraminologist: Kinds and Squirrels

Our first two questions come from Jamie, who asks, “How many species and how many kinds there are.”

First of all, Jamie, fantastic questions. I’m going to answer them separately, but they are related and there will be some overlap between the two answers. When we did our research for the ark kinds for our Ark Encounter attraction, we found over 630 living kinds that would have been on the ark. That number does not include any of the fish, insect, or plant kinds, nor does it include extinct kinds like dinosaurs or pterosaurs. There were probably thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of created kinds at the beginning. Since none of us were there, we simply don’t know for sure. One thing we do know is that the preflood world had a lot more diversity than the modern world.

The question of species brings up the question of what the difference between a species and a kind is. There is an article on the main website you can ask your parents to let you read if you want to learn more about that.1 However, in brief, species are a lower level than kind. There can be multiple species within a kind. Scientists are unsure how many species are alive today. Estimates vary from around two to fifty million species.2 The most recent estimate I could find is from 2011 and estimated around 8.7 million species.3 These numbers are ballpark estimates only, with some taxonomists openly wondering if any of the estimates are accurate.4 So the short answer is, we simply don’t know.

Our next question comes from Juliet, who asks, “When people dig up fossils, how do they know which dinosaur it belongs to?”

Great question, Juliet. When dinosaurs were first found, people thought their bones were part of giant reptiles. The dinosaur Iguanodon was originally drawn as a lizard with a giant horn on its nose. These days, when the dinosaur bones are dug out of the ground, they are compared to other dinosaur bones. If they are the same, or very similar to another bone that has already been found, then the bone is identified as that species of dinosaur. If however, the new bone is not like anything else we know, then it is given a new name. The system is not perfect. For example, juvenile bones can be mistaken for a new species rather than simply juveniles of an existing species. However, it usually works relatively well.

Our final question comes from Mia who asks, “Why do squirrels need to store nuts. Though the Bible does not say much about nuts?”

Awesome question. The Bible does not say much about nuts—that is true. Nor does it talk much about squirrels. Squirrels bury nuts to store food for the winter. During the spring and summer months, they have no problem finding food. However, in the fall, squirrels get busy finding nuts and burying them. Since their fellow squirrels will gladly steal nuts from each other,5 some squirrels are very clever. They will pretend to bury their food in one location, then bury it in another.6 It turns out that these burial locations are not random. In at least some squirrels, the burial takes place in a pattern called “spatial chunking.”7 This makes it easy for the squirrel to remember and find its food when it is hungry.

Hopefully, these answers have helped you and blessed you. Make sure you join us again next week; I will be answering a couple more questions from other kids just like you! If you have a question, ask your parents to help you submit it here.

Footnotes

1. Harry Sanders, “Kind, Species, and What’s in a Name?” Answers in Genesis, May 23, 2022, https://answersingenesis.org/natural-selection/kind-species-name/.
2. Nigel E. Stork, “How many species are there?” Biodiversity and Conservation, 2 (1993): 215-232.
3. Camilo Mora, D. P. Tittensor, Sina Adl, Alastair G. B. Simpson, and Boris Worm, “How many species are there on earth and in the ocean?” PLOS Biology (2011).
4. Robert M. May, “How many species are there on earth?” Science, 241 (1988): 1441-1449.(2011).
5. Jenna L. Donald and Stan Boutin, “Intraspecific cache pilferage by larder-hoarding red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus),” Journal of Mammalogy, 92 (2011): 1013-1020.
6. Michael A. Steele, Sylvia L. Halkin, Peter D. Smallwood, Thomas J. McKenna, Katerina Mitsopoulos, and Matthew Beam, “Cache protection strategies of a scatter-hoarding rodent: do tree squirrels engage in behavioural deception?” Animal Behavior, 75 (2008): 705-714.
7. Mikel M. Delgado and Lucia F. Jacobs, “Caching for where and what: evidence for a mnemonic strategy in a scatter-hoarder,” Royal Society Open Science, 4 (2017).