Natures wonders: mitochondria in bird migrations (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, 12:42 (7 hours, 40 minutes ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: Weighing in at a single ounce, the white-crowned sparrow can fly 2,600 miles, from Mexico to Alaska, on its annual spring migration, sometimes traveling 300 miles in a single night. Arctic terns make even longer journeys of 10,000 miles and more from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica, while great snipes fly over food-poor deserts and seas, sometimes covering 4,200 miles in four days without stopping.

I love these articles on Nature’s Wonders, and I can only thank you yet again for the pleasure they give me (and I’m sure other readers too).

QUOTE: Their studies show how small changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of mitochondria can have huge physiological consequences that contribute to birds’ long-duration, continent-spanning flights.

Wonderment too at our human ability to study these miraculous feats and explain the processes which make them possible.

DAVID: This raises questions; how do unguided birds learn to fly such long distances? How do mitochondria change in anticipation of the flights? Changing as a result of the flights is understandable. It all looks planned and designed to me.

I agree. But the follow-up question is what does the designing and the planning, and what is the history leading up to the miracles now being achieved? These may well be the result of millions of years in which birds gradually extended their search for better living conditions, and their intelligent cells gradually adapted to the requirements of these journeys. Or do you think your God did one of his “de novo” acts, and in order to ensure the existence and survival of humans, performed operations on the cells of certain birds so they could immediately fly thousands of miles unharmed?