Intricate Feather Architecture

The next time you find a feather, you may want to pick it up and give it a good look-see. There are many fine and delicate elements that may cause you to wonder how even a large number of those can keep Chirpy in the air.

Credit: Unsplash / Tevin Trinh

Birds make flying look easy, but their feathers deal with enormous stresses. They have to keep their owner airborne as well as protect them from the elements. Wind is a factor, yet the feathers were designed to keep from breaking.

Feathers are attached through the central shaft, and new research using an electron microscope provides us some insight. It is amazing that despite the obvious specified complexity, the main researcher still had to give homage to evolution even though there is no sign of bird or feather evolution in the fossil record. Want to know why there is no evidence for evolution? The evidence points to the fact that our Creator did all the work. He is the one who deserves the credit, not some vague force called evolution.

It has long been known that the feathers on birds are well engineered structures. They are strong, lightweight, aerodynamic, and even when ruffled, they can be preened back into shape readily. This comes from their intricate architecture: feathers have a long central shaft called a rachis, and from this come barbs, which in turn have barbules. In flight feathers, the barbules have hooks that link them to adjacent barbules. Evolutionists once taught that they came from reptilian scales, but this is discredited now, as one evolutionist has pointed out:

"'Microstructural architecture' of feathers makes them tough".