The height of an 18-foot giraffe--the tallest of all land animals today--is quite daunting.
The clumsy looking giraffe’s ability to run more than 30 miles per hour is very impressive.
Their ability to go weeks without drinking water, if necessary, is remarkable.
Their 18-inch tongues, 8-foot long tails, and 6-foot tall newborns are all very striking.
Perhaps most remarkable is the design of the giraffe’s circulatory system.
Consider that a giraffe’s brain is about 8 feet higher than its heart.
So in order to get blood from its heart up to its brain,
a giraffe must have an enormous heart that can pump blood extremely hard against gravity.
What’s more, it must maintain such blood pressure
as long as the giraffe’s neck is vertically in the air.
It should come as no surprise that this long-necked mammal
is equipped with a 2-foot long, 20-plus pound, thick-walled heart
that is large enough and strong enough to pump blood 8 feet high
creating blood pressure that is about twice that of any other large land mammal,
and as much as three times that of the average person.
But what about when a giraffe suddenly lowers its head several feet below its heart
to get a drink of water?
What happens to all of the blood that the heart
normally pumps upward against gravity to the brain?
If the design of the giraffe were merely left up to time, chance, and random mutations,
what would you expect to happen the first time a giraffe tried to lower its neck to
get a drink of water?
It would seem the heart would pump so much blood to the brain that its blood vessels would explode,
or its brain would fill up with blood so quickly that the giraffe would pass out
and perhaps soon eaten by a lion or crocodile.
So how does the giraffe keep from having brain bleeds
or from feeling woozy and passing out every time it bends down and raises back up?
Giraffes are specially designed with intricate valves in their jugular veins.
These valves help control how much blood gets to the brain during those times when the giraffe
has its head lowered.
Working together with these valves is a network of blood vessels--
known as the “wonder net of the carotids”-- which controls the blood flow into its head.
Atheistic evolutionists admit that the giraffe has a complex pressure-regulation system;
unique valves that prevent overpressure when it lowers its head;
a network of blood vessels that helps stabilize blood pressure as the giraffe moves
its neck up and down;
and a heart powerful enough to send an adequate amount of blood 8 feet upwards against gravity.
Evolutionists would have us believe that nature provided giraffes
with all of this special equipment.
But how do the mindless, purposeless, random processes of time and chance
adequately explain “unique valves,” a heart, lungs, and arteries all being just the right size,
as well as a “wonder net” that keeps just the right constant blood pressure in the brain
whether the giraffe’s neck is raised or lowered.
Even more difficult for evolution to explain is how all of these sophisticated body parts
came about simultaneously?
After all, what good is a big heart without a network of blood vessels
that stabilizes blood pressure?
And what is the point of the wonder net of the carotids, if the giraffe did not have
a heart powerful enough to pump blood 8 feet into the air to begin with?
Evolutionist Robert Wesson openly addressed this issue in his book "Beyond Natural Selection."
He wrote: “All these things had to be accomplished in step, and they must have been done rapidly….
That it could all have come about by synchronized random mutations
strains the definition of random.
The most critical question, however, is how the original impetus to giraffeness--
and a million other adaptations-- got started and acquired sufficient utility
to have selective value….
The observer must be often tempted to suppose that organisms have responded to their conditions
and needs more purposefully than strict Darwinian theory can allow."
The circulatory system of many animals, as well as mankind, is a fascinating study.
The amazingly intricate design of the giraffe's circulatory system,
as well as the rest of its anatomy and physiology, demand a much better explanation
than the random processes of evolution.
In truth, the giraffe is brilliantly designed-- a wonder of God’s creation.