“Walking” Lung Fish – Evolution or Creation

By studying the African lungfish called Protopterus annectens, evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin drew conclusions about the origin of walking. These lungfish can breath air and move across land using its fins. By placing these fish in a tank designed to allow them the filming of lungfish locomotion they found that the fish pushes it self across the bottom of the tank with its rear fins. Sometime they did so in a hoping and other times in a walking type motion.

What really surprised them what that the fish’s find lacked the structure expected for this type of locomotion. Their fins have the same basic structure as found in swimming   lobe-finned fish like the coelacanth. The fact that their gate is more similar to bipedal motion than four lagged motion is also interesting

The evolutionary bias in this study is abundantly clear. They are starting with the assumption that land animals evolved from fish and draw their conclusion based on this presupposition. . Shubin himself stated, "If you showed me the skeleton of this creature and asked me to make a bet on whether it walks or not, I would have bet it couldn't," Their fins seem like the furthest thing from walking appendages possible." So the results surprised them because it was not what they expected but never fear Evolution theory is flexible that any result can be turned into support for the evolutionary model.

From a creation perspective these fish show evidence of being designed to do what they do. They have the strength to move despite the fact that their fin structure suggests they should not.