God hates bison

From the same loony bin that brought you creationism as viewed from a banana (but only the selectively bred bananas, of course) we now bring you the bison!


Buffalo easy to kill, but a real nightmare for evolutionists to explain.
E. Norbert Smith, Ph.D.

It is difficult to imagine an indigenous people any place in the world more closely connected to an animal than were the various Native American plains tribes to the American Bison or buffalo. Indeed, even today tribal leaders refer to the time before the disappearance of the buffalo. Their disappearance marked the end of a way of life that had been in harmony with nature for thousands of years.

With the notable exception of not really being in harmony with the bison. I'm just saying.

They depended on the unlimited bison for food, clothes, tools, medicine, ornaments and shelter. Have you marveled at the success of Native Americans in killing bison survival? Their success plagued me until graduate school. Let me explain.

Please do! That sounds like fun!

Historically there were actually three ways bison were killed by Native Americans. Some were stampeded over cliffs or trapped in box canyons. This can only occur in a limited number of places and could surely not support a vast plains people for centuries. A second way was running down a single animal by horse. Often it took as many as 5 or more fresh horses to finally fatigue the bison. This would only work after Europeans introduced horses and even then could only provide a few animals so the question remains.

Inefficiencies galore.

The third method and the one most often seen on TV involves a horse back rider shooting a running bison with a bow and arrow. This is the one that bothered me for years. I am not a bow hunter, but the idea of hitting the heart of a running bison from a galloping horse seems difficult if not impossible. This problem was uniquely solved by the Creator of man and bison.

God hates bison?

With the notable exception of the American Bison most mammals have two separate pleural or lung cavities. As we all know, one side of our chest can be penetrated collapsing that lung, but the other side remains intact and the remaining lung can support life. The bison has what is called an incomplete mediastinum, that is there is but one pleural cavity containing both lungs. Thus the problem for the Native bow hunter with or without a horse is solved. An arrow must only penetrate the chest at any point and both lungs collapse. The fatally wounded animal would only continue a few yards providing unlimited food, clothing and tools.

Perhaps not unlimited food, but the basic point is valid: The bison has an Achilles heel and the native tribes milked that weakness for everything it was worth. Pretty reasonable of them, really, especially since running out of bison wasn't even a consideration for them.

Before the availability of horses bison could be shot by stealth from a blind or other hiding place. One problem is solved yet another serious comes to mind...a problem seldom mentioned, yet demanding an answer.

There's more?!? Cool!

The problem is for the evolutionist.

Excellent! Scientists love mysteries. What is it?

Other than providing food for hungry people, of what selective advantage is an incompletely divided mediastinum?

Not much of one, which is why a divided mediastinum is an evolutionary advantage.

From an evolutionary sense this makes absolutely no sense.

It makes no sense that there would be creatures in various stages of evolutionary advantages? No, that makes perfect sense actually. And that is exactly what you'd expect to see if evolution is correct.

Indeed conventional wisdom would argue for its elimination from the gene pool.

Which the natives happily provided!

Yet it did remain and fed a continent of Native American for centuries.

There were a lot of them to mow through.

It must indeed require faith and dedication to remain an evolutionist. I am glad I know the Creator of Bison and Native Americans. You can know Him too.

Okay, lets just get down to brass tax here. There's no particular evolutionary advantage to the incompletely divided mediastinum compared to a completely divided mediastinum. But there's no particular disadvantage to it until you start facing a predator armed with projectile weaponry. Then that basic problem of getting pierced once in the chest becomes a really, really big deal.

So what does evolution say will happen for the bison? It says that absent a predator that can take advantage of this weakness, it'll thrive. It's big, bad, and has massive endurance. Evolution further says that once it faces a predator that can take advantage of that weakness, the bison is in a world of hurt. Both of these match up exactly with what actually happened.

It must indeed require faith and dedication to remain a creationist!